Bénédicte is setting-up a work program in the area of social protection and its linkages with agriculture, rural development and food security. She previously worked for the World Bank on social assistance issues, mostly on conditional cash transfers, early childhood development, school-to-work transitions and on national social assistance strategies.  She was preparing and supervising projects and analytical work in the Maghreb and Djibouti for the past two years and in Latin America the three years before.  Prior to joining the Bank, she worked for DfID in Brazil between 2001 and 2005 and did some post-doctoral research at IFPRI in Bangladesh and Central America between 1996 and 1999.  A French National, she holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley and a forestry degree from Ecole Nationale des Eaux et Forêts. She studied biology at Ecole Normale Supérieure Ulm (France).