Zuzana Brixiova Schwidrowski is Director of Gender, Poverty and Social Policy at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. She previously led UNECA's Macroeconomics, Finance & Governance Division and the Sub-Regional Office for North Africa. Her research interests are labor economics, development economics, and entrepreneurship. She has published in journals such as Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Development Policy Review, Economics Letters, Economic Modelling, Emerging Markets Review, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Review of Development Economics, Small Business Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, and World Development. She holds Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota and MA in Finance from the Prague University of Economics.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2011.