He has held senior positions in the World Bank, and served for more than nine years as the CEO of France's government agency for international development, AFD.

Since 2011 he has been CEO of an investment group, Investisseurs et Partenaires (I&P), and a board member for several private companies.

He was previously Director in charge of international development at the French Ministry of Cooperation, then Vice President for Asia at the World Bank.

[2] In October 2007, he launched the blog Ideas4development alongside Josette Sheeran, Donald Kaberuka, Kemal Dervis, Pascal Lamy, Abdou Diouf and Supachai Panitchpakdi, in which the authors share their visions, doubts and hopes for international development.

Severino was a close ally of Emmanuel Faber in moving Danone toward a greater concern with environmental and social priorities as against immediately commercial ones: a project that resulted in the ouster of Faber by activist shareholders in March 2021.