Nancy Lozano Gracia is a Senior Economist in the Urban, Rural and Social Global Practice within the World Bank. Within GSURR she has worked extensively on designing and using diagnostic tools to improve our understanding of the challenges of rapid urbanization and city development, and help identify priorities for action. As part of these efforts, she has led work using innovative data collection methods such as satellite imagery, new survey designs, and Big Data approaches, to build a better understanding of within city challenges. As a core member of the Global Solutions Group on Territorial Development, Nancy’s work has recently focused on using spatial analysis to identify priorities for action in lagging regions. She holds a doctorate in applied economics from University of Illinois, where she worked on models for measuring capitalization of the value of local amenities into housing prices. Her areas of work span from urban and regional economics, spatial economic analysis and spatial econometric applications.