[2] He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he was previously a senior fellow,[3] and until July 2019 served in the international board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative[4] and in a number of advisory boards on governance, anti-corruption and natural resources and has also been in high-level expert commissions such as at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,[5][6] the Inter-American Development Bank[7][8] and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
[11] Kaufmann was born and grew up in Santiago, Chile, the son of Jewish immigrants that escaped Germany in 1939.
[2] At the World Bank, he held positions working on programs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Africa and Latin America, as well as conducting applied research around the globe.
He also served as lead economist in the research department and was later a manager of the finance, regulation and governance unit.
[21][22] While at the World Bank during the 1990s, Kaufmann and his colleague Aart Kraay developed the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI).
[29] Kaufmann continued working and advising on governance, corruption and state capture matters at the global, regional and national level, including focusing in resource-rich countries and on the natural resource sector in recent years.
[30] He has also recently been an expert member of high level advisory panels for multilateral organizations, such as the Inter-American Development Bank, co-authoring the November 2018 Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption, Transparency, and Integrity in Latin America and the Caribbean,[31] (selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top books of 2019)[32] as well as a co-author of a report to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as a member of the High-Level Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption and Integrity to that organization.
[33] Other recent publications on governance and natural resources have appeared at Brookings Institution[34][35] as well as opinion pieces in the Financial Times.