ABOUT
Mr. Kadono was appointed Country Director for Papua New Guinea in January 2026. He previously served as the Country Director for Sri Lanka overseeing a lending portfolio of $4 billion and leading complex policy dialogues in the aftermath of the economic crisis.
Mr. Kadono has over 26 years of professional experience in international development, including 14 years in ADB. He initially joined ADB in 2006 and worked primarily in the energy sector in East, Central, West, and Southeast Asia, including a posting in Vietnam.
He then joined the World Bank in 2015 as a Senior Energy Specialist, operating out of the Singapore Hub for Urban, Infrastructure and PPP. A challenging hydropower PPP project he led in the Solomon Islands with IFC and MIGA received the Regional Vice President Award in 2019, and the prestigious IJ Global Award in 2020.
He rejoined ADB in December 2020 as a Principal Planning and Policy Economist where he was responsible for the strategic planning and policy formulation for ADB. He also undertook the organizational reform of ADB, business process reviews, and contributed to the capital adequacy framework review which today enables ADB to significantly increase its lending volume.
He started his career as an engineering consultant in the areas of energy, urban, water, and reconstruction projects, roaming the fields of developing Asia and Latin America for seven years.
Mr. Kadono, a national of Japan, grew up in the Netherlands, Canada, United States, Spain, and France, and holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Civil Engineering from University of Tokyo in Japan. He was selected as a Fulbright Scholar in 2006 but decided to continue contributing to economic development in the field. He is married with a son in university in Japan and a daughter in high school in Singapore with her mother.