Ila Patnaik is chief economist at the Aditya Birla Group. Before joining the private sector, she served as a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi. She has also been Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India, Non-Resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a regular columnist at The Indian Express and ThePrint.com. She holds a BA (Economics) from Delhi University, a Master's in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a Ph.D (Economics) from the University of Surrey.