Mia Harbitz is an independent consultant in the area of identity management with extensive experience in civil registration and civil identification project management in developing countries. Over the course of a 25-year career with the inter-American Development Bank she has designed and managed development projects that modernized and strengthened the capacities of civil and identification registries predominantly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her academic background is in engineering, and in addition to the work in Latin America in she has worked in development programs in the Middle East, and in Africa and Asia for the World Bank. She has authored and contributed to numerous publications and books on legal identity, identity management, the implications of under-registration and social inclusion as a means to poverty reduction.