Prof. Robert Holzmann, an Austrian national, is the Director of the Social Protection Department of the Human Development Network of the World Bank (since May 1997). This unit is in charge of the conceptual and strategic Bank work in the area of social risk management, covering, labor market interventions (including child labor), social insurance (including pensions) and social safety nets (including social funds). He is the key author of the Social Protection Sector Strategy paper of the Bank which was approved by the Bank’s Board in September 2000. The paper proposes a new definition for social protection and is based on the newly developed social risk management framework. He joined the Bank with a leave of absence from the University of Saarland (Germany) where he is the professor of economics and the Director to the European Institute. He was professor of economics at the University of Vienna and guest-professor at universities in Chile, Japan and the USA. As principal administrator at the OECD (1985-87), he wrote a comprehensive report on public pension reform in industrialized countries. At the IMF (1988-1990), and later as a consultant, he was working on fiscal and social security issues of Central and Eastern European transition economies, and he researched intensively the economic and financial market effects of the Chilean pension reform. At the Bank he was heavily involved in social protection programs during the recent financial crisis in East Asia. He has published 18 books and over 100 articles on social, fiscal and financial policy issues.