Ms. Aishath Shahuda, is currently the Deputy Chief Statistician of the Maldives Bureau of Statistics. She has thirty years of experience in official statistics in the National Statistics Office.

Her current responsibilities lie in leadership and management of the Statistics Bureau as well as in the development and coordination of the National Statistical System of Maldives.

She served as the Chief Statistician of the National Bureau of Statistics for eight years, prior to the ratification of Maldives Statistics Act in July 2021. Prior to this she was head of Economic Statistics Section. She has knowledge and experience in planning and management of Censuses and national household surveys.

Ms. Shahuda has also been active in the international statistical community. She served as the chair of the ESCAP committee on Statistics during 2015-2016 and as board member of the Bureau prior to that. She also represented the South Asia Region at the PARIS21 board.

She has a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Dr. Jaroslav Sixta studied Statistics at the University of Economics in Prague (Czech Republic). He graduated in 2003 with the final thesis “Accumulation and changes of worth in national accounts, specifics of non-produced assets”.

Dr. Sixta has been working at the Czech Statistical Office since 2002, he started in the National Accounts Department where he was responsible for non-financial assets. From 2007 to 2014, he was Head of the Input-Output Tables Unit and then he became Director of the Macroeconomic Statistics Section. In 2018, dr. Sixta became Vice-President of the Czech Statistical Office. He has provided technical assistance to many countries (mainly North Macedonia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine).

In 2010, he received his Ph.D. and since then, he has been actively participating in the academic sphere as an Associate Professor. He is also a Lecturer of national accounts, economic statistics, and advanced statistical methods. He is an author/co-author of three scientific books and more than one hundred scientific contributions in the field of statistics covering papers and conference contributions. He is a member of the International Input-Output Association, the Czech Statistical Society, and the Czech Demographic Society.

Erich H. Strassner is Chief of the Real Sector Division in the Statistics Department of the International Monetary Fund. He is also chair of the ISWGNA Digitalization Task Team for the current update of the System of National Accounts and Balance of Payments Manual.

Previously, Mr. Strassner was Associate Director of National Economic Accounts at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) where he was the senior leader overseeing BEA's flagship economic measures, such as gross domestic product (GDP), personal income, corporate profits, the Industry Accounts and related macroeconomic statistics.

From March 2020 through October 2022, Mr. Strassner served as the de facto Deputy Director to the Acting BEA Director, where he shaped enterprise efforts on strategy involving BEA program area priorities, budget formulation and execution, human capital, as well as information technology and innovation management.

At BEA, Mr. Strassner led several new, innovative data projects. He shaped the creation of statistics measuring the fast-changing digital economy and advances in the understanding of global value chains. Mr. Strassner was also leading efforts to explore expanded economic measures “beyond GDP” to better gauge Americans' well-being.

Mr. Strassner holds an MBA from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and an M.A. in economics from The George Washington University.