Mr. Richard E. Bissell, an American national, is the Executive Director of the Policy and Global Affairs Division at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., Chair of the Independent Review Mechanism at the African Development Bank, and Lead Compliance Officer for the United Nations Development Program Social and Environmental Compliance Unit.

He has also served as a Member of the independent Compliance Review Panel at the Asian Development Bank. Prior to his years of service at the Panel (1994 - 1997), he was a senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He served at USAID from 1986-1993, as head of policy and later as the head of the Bureau of Science and Technology, and was previously a professor at several U.S. universities, including Georgetown University and University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Bissell has published widely, in both books and articles, on political economy in developing countries. He was educated at Stanford University, took his Ph.D. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University.