Soonhwa Yi
Senior Research Fellow
Soonhwa is a researcher, specializing in labor market informality and international labor mobility, drawing on more than two decades of global development policy experience. She previously spent some 20 years at the World Bank, where she led key initiatives on labor mobility, including co-authoring the World Development Report 2023 and co-leading the 2025 regional report on migration in East Asia and Pacific.
Her broader policy experience includes macroeconomic monitoring and debt sustainability at the Bank, informing aid allocation frameworks for low-income countries, as well as trade in services at the Organization of American States and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council. Her country experience spans East and Southeast Asia, the Pacific, South Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Latin America.