Gregory Guldin

As the President and CEO of Cross-Cultural Consulting Services (CCCS), he has worked with government and private sector clients to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and conflict resolution, monitoring and evaluation, social management planning, Indigenous Peoples empowerment, participatory stakeholder engagement, resettlement planning, and social impact assessment.

Indigenous Peoples Policy & Implementation Experience: Having served on or advised Indigenous Peoples policy formulation teams in the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Dr. Guldin is intimately familiar with the details of IFI social safeguard standards and the intricacies of negotiating their production and implementation. Based on these experiences, Dr. Guldin authored the ADB’s Indigenous Peoples Policy Handbook (2007), and he co-authored the World Bank Indigenous Peoples Policy Guidebook (2005); both of these provided internal guidance to IFI staff to implement their Indigenous Peoples policies. In late 2019, he wrote EBRD’s Guidance Note for their new Indigenous Peoples policy. As for Indigenous Peoples policy implementation, since 1997 Dr. Guldin has been preparing, implementing, and monitoring IP(D)Ps and has recently begun working with IPOs to advocate for a new paradigm: the Indigenous Peoples Participation and Partnership Paradigm which provides practical guidance for an FPIC-Standard which can transform project stakeholder engagement with Indigenous Peoples.

FPIC Specialist: In 2010, he facilitated the first ever private sector achievement of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) principle, and since then has worked with project management and staff to operationalize FPIC across a range of brown and greenfield projects. Most recently, the World Bank engaged him to lead the production of Technical Guidelines for FPIC implementation after he led the successful effort to achieve consent for the UT-1 Hydropower Project in Nepal, the first such effort for IFC outside of Latin America and the first in the hydropower sector. Following this effort, the Nepal Electricity Authority, the World Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have all engaged Dr. Guldin to serve renewable energy projects by facilitating FPIC processes and Indigenous Peoples Plan preparation while the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have hired Greg to pioneer the FPIC process in the Africa Region and train development specialists in South and Southeast Asia on FPIC. In January 2025 the World Bank published Technical Guidelines for FPIC implementation that Greg co-authored.

He has worked in the following sectors: Transportation & Energy (Highways, Railways, Hydropower, Geothermal); Extractives (Oil & Gas; Mining); Urban & Regional Planning; Financial Intermediaries; Agriculture, and in countries such as: Bangladesh; China; Ethiopia; Georgia; India; Indonesia; Kenya; Malaysia; Nepal; the Philippines; Russian Federation; Tanzania; United States; Vietnam / South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, East Africa, Eastern Europe, Caucasus, North America

Mr. Guldin holds a BA on Anthropology and Political Science from the City University of New York, 1971; an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1973; and a PhD on Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, East Asian Studies from University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1977