Working Group Member Profiles

Working Group Co-Chairs

Amanda Glassman, Center for Global Development
Amanda Glassman is executive vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and also serves as chief executive officer of CGD Europe. Her research focuses on priority-setting, resource allocation and value for money in global health, as well as data for development. Prior to her current position, she served as director for global health policy at the Center from 2010 to 2016. Before joining CGD, Glassman was principal technical lead for health at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she led policy dialogue with member countries, designed the results-based grant program Salud Mesoamerica 2015 and served as team leader for conditional cash transfer programs such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Colombia’s Familias en Accion. Glassman has more than 25 years of experience working on health and social protection policy and programs in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world.

Ruth Levine, IDinsight
Ruth Levine is CEO of IDinsight and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. She is a development economist with more than three decades of experience working on the design and implementation of policies and programs related to global health and education, social protection, gender equality, and labor markets. An expert on the use of data and evidence for decision making, Ruth led the Global Development and Population Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, overseeing a total of approximately $1 billion in philanthropic grantmaking between 2011-19. Previously, she was a deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she led the development of the agency’s evaluation policy. Ruth spent nearly a decade at the Center for Global Development as a senior fellow and vice president for programs and operations. She also designed and evaluated health and education projects at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. She holds a doctoral degree jointly in economics and demography from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.S. from Cornell University.

Working Group Members

Tania Alfonso, US Agency for International Development
Tania Alfonso is a Senior Evaluation Specialist at USAID, where she provides ongoing technical assistance to regional and bilateral USAID missions, particularly in commissioning impact evaluations and building evaluation into the design of projects. Prior to joining USAID, she was the Training Director and Country Director for Peru at Innovations for Poverty Action, where she managed randomized evaluations of microfinance, health, agriculture, and livelihood support programs in Peru and Ecuador. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced international Studies. She holds an MA in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Yale University.

Norma Altshuler, Open Philanthropy
Norma Altshuler is the founding Program Officer in Global Aid Policy at Open Philanthropy. Previously Norma was a Program Officer in Gender Equity and Governance at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Norma also helped found the Global Innovation Fund, where she also built a grant portfolio supporting evidence-informed innovations in developing countries. Prior to that, as a portfolio manager at USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), she made investments, co-led the team’s evaluation and advisory services, and contributed to the strategic and operational development of the program. Norma has also worked for several social enterprises and non-profits in East Africa. Earlier in her career, she conducted evaluations of development and social protection programs with Mathematica Policy Research.

Jeannie Annan, International Rescue Committee
Jeannie Annan, PhD, is the IRC’s Chief Research and Innovation Officer, spearheading the agency’s efforts to design, test, and scale life-changing solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. Jeannie co-founded The Airbel Impact Lab as part of the IRC’s investment in research and innovation to improve scale and impact. Airbel has been working in more than 30 countries around the world to find the most impactful and cost-effective products, services, and delivery systems possible. Her research focuses on developing and testing interventions that prevent and mitigate the consequences of violence against women and children. Before becoming a researcher, she led education and psychosocial programming in Kosovo, northern Uganda and South Sudan. Dr. Annan is a Senior Research Associate at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She is also a research affiliate at Innovations for Poverty Action where she leads their initiatives on humanitarian and forced displacement and on intimate partner violence. She holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Indiana University - Bloomington. She was a post-doctorate fellow at Yale University and NYU and a visiting scientist at Harvard School of Public Health.

Essaïd Azzouzi, Millennium Challenge Account-Morocco
Essaïd Azzouzi is an agricultural economist, currently holding the position of deputy CEO of Millennium Challenge Account-Morocco where he contributes to overseeing the implementation of a $450 million cooperation program between Morocco and MCC, covering the areas of education and training for employability and land productivity. Prior to joining MCA-Morocco, he contributed to the design of this program as a ‘‘chargé de mission’’ at the Head of Government Office. From 2008 to 2013, Azzouzi was the Monitoring and Evaluation Director at MCA-Morocco I where he contributed to the implementation of the first $700 million program funded by MCC covering various sectors.

Kelly Bidwell, Office of Evaluation Sciences, US General Services Administration
Kelly Bidwell is the Director of the Office of Evaluation Sciences at the US General Services Administration and serves as the agency's Evaluation Officer and Statistical Official. The Office of Evaluation Sciences has completed over 100 rigorous evaluations across the federal government on a wide range of agency and government-wide policy priorities. Prior to joining the federal government, Kelly worked at Innovations for Poverty Action and the Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab.

Cynthia Bosumtwi-Sam, Innovations for Poverty Action, Ghana
Cynthia Bosumtwi-Sam is Policy Adviser at Innovations for Poverty Action, Ghana. Cynthia was the former Executive Secretary of the National Inspectorate Board of the Ministry of Education, Ghana. She has over fifteen years of experience in senior management positions within the Ministry of Education, having served in several capacities including as Director for School Health Programs and the Basic Education Directorate. She holds an M.A. in International Education and Development from the University of Sussex, UK; a Post Graduate Diploma in Leadership Development in ICT and the Knowledge Society from the Dublin City University; and a BA (Hons) from the University of Ghana. She is a conference speaker and researcher.

Baboucarr Bouy, Effective Intervention
Baboucarr Bouy joined Effective Intervention in 2017 and is CEO (Africa) responsible for all activities of Effective Intervention in Africa. From 2004 to 2017, he was the Permanent Secretary at the Gambian Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, where he provided strategic leadership and led the introduction of rigorous national testing under the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA). In addition to his long and highly respected career in the field of education in Gambia, he has an M.A. in Education and International Development from the University of London. In 2012 he was awarded the World Bank's Jit Gill Memorial Award for outstanding public service, making him the second African to be awarded this distinguished prize.

Neil Buddy Shah, Clinton Health Access Initiative
Neil Buddy Shah is the chief executive of the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Buddy was previously the Managing Director of GiveWell, which evaluates the cost-effectiveness of different charities and helps drive funding to the most impactful uses. Buddy was also CEO and Founding Partner of IDinsight, a global data analytics, research and advisory organization that helps governments, NGOs and foundations maximize their social impact using data and evidence. He previously worked at the World Bank and J-PAL. Buddy holds an AB in economics from Harvard, an MD with special distinction in global health policy from Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and an MPA in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves as visiting faculty for Harvard Kennedy School’s executive education program Leading Social Programs, and is a former Echoing Green Fellow.

Annie Chumpitaz, formerly Ministry of Education, Peru
Annie Chumpitaz is a consultant for the World Bank in the Education Global Practice. She was previously the Head of Monitoring and Strategic Evaluation at the Ministry of Education in Peru. Chumpitaz Torres is an economist from the Universidad del Pacífico, specializing in public policy. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and International Development from Harvard University. She has also worked in the Measurement of Educational Quality Unit of the Ministry of Education and in the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion of Peru, and has previously also been a consultant for the World Bank on global poverty practices.

Cláudia Costin, Getulio Vargas Foundation
Cláudia is the founder and director of the Center for Educational Policies (CEIPE), a think and do tank within Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a leading private university in Brazil and is a visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Education. Prior to founding CEIPE, she was a Senior Director for Global Education at the World Bank. Before joining the World Bank, Costin served as Secretary of Education of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her former positions include Secretary of State of Culture at São Paulo and Federal Minister for Public Administration and State Reform. She has also held academic positions at the Catholic University of São Paulo, Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, INSPER Institute of Education and Research, and École Nationale d’Administration Publique in Québec. In 2018, she joined the Global Commission for the Future of Work at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and in 2020 joined both governing boards of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and Qatar Foundation.

Iqbal Dhaliwal, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Iqbal Dhaliwal is the Global Executive Director of J-PAL, a global research center founded at MIT and working in dozens of locations worldwide to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. He helps develop J-PAL’s strategic vision, and coordinate worldwide research, policy outreach, capacity building, and operations. He is also the co-author of a very large-scale health sector impact evaluation. Before joining J-PAL in 2009, Iqbal worked in both economic and strategy consulting in the U.S. He began his career in global development as a member of IAS - India’s senior civil service where he helped formulate policy as a Deputy Secretary and Director of a statewide welfare department. He has extensive experience in program implementation as the head of a large rural county government. He has an MA and BA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and an MPA in international development from Princeton University.

Casey Dunning, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Casey Dunning is Director of Results and Learning at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) where she works to produce and disseminate results and learning from MCC’s evidence-based investments around the world. Prior to joining MCC, Dunning was a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development where she focused on US development policy coherence and analyzed the application of aid effectiveness principles within USAID, with a particular emphasis on country ownership, aid selectivity, and innovative aid delivery models. Dunning previously worked as a senior policy analyst for the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative where she also supported the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Before that, in a previous role at CGD, she analyzed MCC and researched emerging growth trends in sub-Saharan Africa. Dunning graduated summa cum laude from Emory University with a specialization in international political economy. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from George Washington University.

Peter Evans, U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre
Peter Evans is the Director of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre. He was previously the head of the UK FCDO commissioning team for governance, conflict, inclusion and humanitarian research. From 2001 to 2014, he was a DFID social development/governance adviser (for Malawi, Bangladesh, India) and DFID’s lead for the Think Tank Initiative. In the FCDO research team, he drove “nose to tail” engagement with policymakers and practitioners throughout the research cycle and extended rigorous impact evaluation into VAWG, disability inclusion, governance, crime, conflict, and humanitarian response, balanced with a larger portfolio of mixed method political and social research. Before DFID, he spent six years working in Kolkata on disability inclusion, and water and sanitation. Evans has a PhD in medical geography.

Marie Gaarder, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
Marie Gaarder is the executive director of 3ie, where she leads the organization’s efforts to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries by supporting the generation and effective use of high-quality and relevant evidence to inform decision-making. Marie has over 20 years of experience managing operational and research projects with a development focus. In her previous role at 3ie as director for evaluation and global director for innovation and country engagement, Marie provided strategic direction and guidance to 3ie’s work in evaluation and synthesis. Prior to joining 3ie, she was a manager in the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, overseeing thematic, sector, corporate and project evaluations. She has also worked as the director of the evaluation department at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and as a senior social development economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. Marie has published extensively, including on evidence gap maps, cash transfer programs, evaluation in fragile and conflict-affected states, and institutionalizing evidence use. She is the co-chair of the International Development Coordinating Group within the Campbell Collaboration. Marie holds a PhD in Economics from University College London, an MSc in Economics from London School of Economics and a graduate degree in Political Science, Arabic and Economics from University of Oslo, Norway.

Seth Garz, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Seth Garz manages the Research & Measurement portfolios for the Financial Services for the Poor strategy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Seth was a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action, where he was the lead researcher for a large-scale randomized control trial in the Dominican Republic, evaluating innovations to the country’s G2P conditional cash transfer program. Seth has previously worked for Goldman Sachs and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has conducted a variety of policy consulting work for organizations such as the World Bank Gender Innovation Lab and the City of San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment. He remains actively engaged in research at the intersection of G2P programs, financial inclusion, and gender.

Ashu Handa, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Transfer Project
Ashu Handa is Kenan Eminent Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Handa is an economist working on poverty, health and human development in sub-Saharan Africa. He is co-PI of The Transfer Project, a regional initiative with UNICEF and FAO to understand the broad effects of government sponsored cash transfer programs in sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently studying the long-term effects of cash transfers in Zambia and Malawi. Handa served as Chief of Social & Economic Policy at UNICEF's Office of Research-Innocenti, Florence, Italy, in 2013-2016 while on leave from UNC. In that capacity, he led the Innocenti Report Card Series, UNICEF's flagship publication on the well-being of children in rich countries. Dr. Handa has previously worked at the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique), and the University of the West Indies-Mona.

Daniel Handel, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
Daniel Handel is the Lead Specialist for External Engagement at 3ie. Daniel was formerly the lead of the Evaluation Team in USAID’s Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning. In that role, he worked to improve the quality and use of evaluation in order to improve the effectiveness of USAID programming. Previously, he worked as Senior Advisor on Aid Effectiveness in the Global Development Lab with the primary responsibility of expanding to new countries the cash benchmarking work he began in Rwanda. He began his foreign service career in 2010 with a posting in Nicaragua. During his subsequent tour in Rwanda, he focused on nutrition analysis and program design, helped the mission make use of completed evaluations, and spearheaded several new evaluations.

Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network
Gonzalo Hernández Licona is currently the director of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN-OPHI), where he coordinates efforts in more than 60 countries and 19 international institutions to advance and exchange ideas about implementing multidimensional poverty indicators. Gonzalo is also a 3ie senior research fellow and works with UNICEF, the Global Evaluation Initiative and the UN on country-led evaluations. Prior to this, Gonzalo was the executive secretary of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) in Mexico between 2005 and 2019, where he coordinated the evaluation of social policies and measurement of poverty at the national, state and municipality levels. From 2005 to 2020, Gonzalo was the general director of monitoring and evaluation at Mexico’s Ministry of Social Development. Gonzalo was also a member of 3ie’s board of commissioners from 2008 to 2018. Gonzalo has a PhD in Economics from Oxford University, MA in Economics from the University of Essex, and a BA from ITAM.

Michael Hiscox, Harvard University
Michael Hiscox is the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government, Harvard University. At Harvard, he is the Founding Director of the Sustainability, Transparency, Accountability Research (STAR) Lab and a faculty member of the Behavioral Insights Group at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. He is also a faculty associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment. While on leave from Harvard between 2015 and 2017, Professor Hiscox was the founding Director of the Behavioural Economics Team (BETA) in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government. He continues to serve as an adviser to BETA. Professor Hiscox received his Bachelor of Economics (First Class) from the University of Sydney and his PhD from Harvard University. His research has examined international trade and immigration policy, economic development, global supply chains, corporate responsibility, and sustainability initiatives.

Prudence Kaoma, Ministry of Finance and National Planning, Zambia
Prudence Kaoma is the Director of Monitoring and Evaluation in the Ministry of Finance and National Planning. Ms. Kaoma has a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry and wide experience in development economics, monitoring and evaluation, and research. She is a strong community and social services professional with a Social Sciences Bachelor's Degree from the University of Zambia and a Master's Degree focused in Public Policy from National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan.

Andrew Karlyn, formerly Living Goods
Andrew Karlyn was formerly Chief Impact Officer with Living Goods in Nairobi, where he directed product design and impact measurement for community health delivery. With Mercy Corps AgriFin in East Africa, Dr. Karlyn oversaw impact measurement for digital finance products for small-holder farmers. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Regional Advisor for USAID’s Global Development Lab where he coordinated field response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Then in Nairobi, he led regional initiatives in health, cross-border payments, and agriculture. Dr. Karlyn was Country Representative for the Population Council in Nigeria (2007-10), leading interventions on social determinants of HIV transmission for girls and young women, and marginalized at-risk populations. Dr. Karlyn led health systems strengthening efforts in Northern Nigeria which introduced task-shifting protocols to prevent maternal and newborn mortality due to eclampsia. Dr. Karlyn holds a PhD in Demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2005), and Master’s in Medical Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania (1989). Dr. Karlyn is currently based in Lusaka, Zambia as an independent consultant, supporting behavioral insight for the digital health, agriculture and financial inclusion sectors.

Megan Kennedy-Chouane, OECD Development Cooperation Directorate
Megan Kennedy-Chouane heads the Evaluation Unit in the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate, managing the DAC Network on Development Evaluation. She currently leads work on evaluating blended finance, and coordinates the COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition, a collaborative platform for evaluating international development and humanitarian assistance to the pandemic response and recovery efforts. She has expertise in supporting evidence-informed policy making and facilitating social change and cross-sector collaboration. Previously, Megan worked at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in London, managing a portfolio of evidence, measurement and evaluation work on climate change mitigation. Megan holds a Master's in Public Administration. She is a US national and lives in Paris, France.

Catherine Kyobutungi, African Population and Health Research Center
Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Heidelberg and a Master of Science in Community Health and Health Management. She is the Executive Director at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). She was formerly the Director of Research and has served APHRC in several leadership roles over the past decade, having joined as a Post-doctoral Fellow in May 2006. Dr. Kyobutungi studied Medicine at Makerere University, Kampala after which she worked as a medical officer at Rushere hospital, a rural health facility in western Uganda, for three years. In 2018, Catherine was elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and in 2019, she was selected as a Joep Lange Chair at the University of Amsterdam—a position in which she investigates chronic disease management in African countries. She is the co-director of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), a program that seeks to strengthen the capacity of African research leaders and has trained more than 230 PhD fellows in eight African universities. Dr. Kyobutungi has served on numerous boards, panels, and expert groups, including the United States International University in Africa (USIU-A) Council, INDEPTH Network Board of Directors, Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), the Advisory Council of the African Diaspora Fellowship Program at the Institute of International Education, and the steering committee of the Countdown to 2030 Initiative. Her research interests are in chronic disease management as a framework for bridging the gap between what we know about non-communicable diseases and health system responsiveness. Dr. Kyobutungi is a strong advocate for African voices in the continent’s development, and a proponent of evidence-informed decision making with Africans in the driving seat.

Arianna Legovini, Development Impact Evaluation, World Bank
Arianna Legovini is the founder and head of the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) Department of the World Bank. She established this group in 2009 creating a model of collaboration between economic development research and practice to optimize returns to development finance and build government capacity for data and evidence-informed country policies. She raised $200 million to develop impact evaluation programs in under-evaluated sectors innovating in measurement and data systems, and using data analytics and experimental evidence to transform global development policy. She now presides over a team of 200 people working with 200 agencies in 60 countries shaping the design and adaptive implementation of $20 billion in development finance. She started similar groups in the Inter-American Development Bank and the Africa region of the World Bank. An economist by training, she has been providing advice to 30 multilateral and bilateral development agencies in the world.

Ida Lindkvist, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
Ida Lindkvist is Senior Advisor in the Department for Evaluation at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), working on the evaluation of Norwegian development assistance. She holds a PhD in economics and an MSc in International Political Economy and an MA in Comparative Politics. She has previously worked with behavioral economics, results-based financing, and the evaluation of results-based management. She is particularly interested in learning and the role of evaluation in management decisions. She has published on various topics from global health to the political economy of evaluation and is a co-editor of a newly published book, Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation: Increasing Relevance and Utility.

Timothy Lubanga, Office of the Prime Minister, Uganda
Timothy Lubanga is an expert on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) with experience in social protection, especially in fragile and conflict affected environments. He was team leader of a multi‐sectoral team that designed and managed a post conflict master plan for northern Uganda—the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) from 2005 to 2009. He is currently Commissioner for M&E at the Office of the Prime Minister, responsible for managing the Uganda Country National M&E System (NIMES). He is also co‐chair of a National M&E Technical Working Group initiating, developing and le NIMES and developing National Policy on M&E. His background is in Economics and Management with specialization in development economics. For more than 15 years, he has worked in the field of rural development and social protection in northern Uganda. He was an Economist in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and served as a Principal Economist in charge of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs and later became in charge of designing and managing the World Bank-funded northern Uganda Social Action Fund, a post conflict community-driven development intervention for war ravaged northern Uganda.

Janeen Madan Keller, Center for Global Development
Janeen Madan Keller is a Policy Fellow and Assistant Director of Global Health at the Center for Global Development. At CGD, her research has covered a range of topics including global health financing; conducting and using evaluations to strengthen evidence-informed policies and programming; and development effectiveness more broadly. Previously, she worked with the UN World Food Program’s Regional Office in Dakar, Senegal supporting nutrition and food security programs across West Africa. She also worked with UNICEF in Mali and conducted research for an impact evaluation on health behavior change in Niger. Originally from Mumbai, India, she holds a master’s degree in public health nutrition from Tufts University and a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Vassar College.

Laurenz Mahlanza-Langer, Africa Centre for Evidence, University of Johannesburg
Laurenz Mahlanza-Langer is a senior researcher and the evidence synthesis portfolio lead for the Africa Centre for Evidence at the University of Johannesburg. Laurenz’s work focuses on supporting government decision-makers to integrate evidence from research syntheses (e.g. evidence maps, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses) in the formulation and design of public policies and programs. He strives to support public sector organizations in building effective and sustainable systems for evidence management and use. This includes the institutionalizing of policy-relevant evidence maps, responsive evidence services, and co-production approaches. Laurenz is the lead author of the Science of Using Science report, a systematic review of what works to enhance evidence use and has worked on over 60 evidence syntheses. He holds a PhD from the University College London and a BA degree in Development Studies from the University of Johannesburg.

Santhosh Mathew, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Santhosh Mathew is a political economist with extensive experience as a civil servant within the Indian Administrative Service from 1985 to 2017. With a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, an MSc in Social Research Methods from the University of Sussex, and an MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, he combined teaching and research with his assignments in the civil service. He was Professor of Social Management at India’s civil service college in Mussoorie (1994-2000) and National Program Director (2000-03) of the Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) program in India. He was previously Principal Secretary, Rural Development & Public Grievance, Government of Bihar, Joint Secretary (Skills, Policy & IT) at the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, Chairperson, National Council for Teacher Education, Government of India and Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar. He is currently with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New Delhi and serves on the Boards of the Global Innovation Fund in London as well as the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute at Belur Math, Howrah.

Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University
Mushfiq Mobarak is a Professor of Economics at Yale University with concurrent appointments in the School of Management and the Department of Economics. Mobarak is the founder and faculty director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE). He holds or has held other appointments at Innovations for Poverty Action, the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, and the International Growth Centre (IGC) at LSE. He conducts field experiments exploring ways to spur adoption of technologies or behaviors that are likely to improve welfare in developing countries. He also examines the complexities of scaling up development interventions that are proven effective in such trials. Further, Mobarak is collaborating with the government of Bangladesh, NGOs, and think tanks such as BRAC and BIGD, the major Bangladeshi telecom providers, Innovations for Poverty Action, UNDP, and others to devise evidence-based COVID response strategies for Bangladesh and other developing countries.

Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, Department of Basic Education, South Africa
Nompumelelo Mohohlwane is an education researcher working as a Deputy Director in the Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate at the national Department of Basic Education, South Africa and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. The unit is responsible for system monitoring, supporting performance information management, and conducting research and evaluation of education interventions. She is part of the research team for the government-led Early Grade Reading Study randomized control trials. Her Master’s studies focused on substantiating the contribution of RCTs to evaluating early grade reading acquisition using literature analysis and empirical data analysis of large sample data. She is currently a PhD candidate; her studies focus on language in education policy.

Gulzar Natarajan, Government of Andhra Pradesh, India
Gulzar Natarajan is a member of the Indian Administrative Service and is currently Secretary, Finance Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh. Before this, he was a Senior Managing Director at the Global Innovation Fund, a London-based international development fund. In a 20-year career, he has previously worked in the office of the Prime Minister of India, held leadership positions as municipal commissioner of a city with a population of 1.5 million, as chairman of an electricity distribution company with 4.5 million consumers, and as the head of the district government of Hyderabad District. He holds a Bachelor’s in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, and a Master’s in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Paul Niehaus, University of California, San Diego
Paul Niehaus is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, where he works with governments in emerging markets to improve the implementation of social programs. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), an Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). He is also co-founder and chairman of GiveDirectly, currently a top-rated nonprofit by GiveWell and ranked among the 25 most audacious companies (Inc) and 10 most innovative companies in finance (Fast Company), and a cofounder of two emerging markets fintech companies: Segovia, an enterprise payments platform, and Taptap Send, a consumer remittance startup. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University. In 2013 Foreign Policy named him one of its 100 leading "Global Thinkers."

Amos Njuguna, United States International University - Africa
Amos Njuguna is the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Research and Extension at United States International University - Africa and a founding member of the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA). He has a background in financial economics and over 15 years of experience working on financial products, savings behaviors, and financial systems in the public and private sectors. His research has impacted policy outcomes in the Kenyan retirement benefits industry, insurance industry, and public governance. Additionally, he was the project manager for an entrepreneurship program funded by Goldman Sachs and a food security program funded by IDRC and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the inaugural Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, he has embedded impact evaluations in the research methodology curriculum for all graduate programs in the University and contributed to the training of faculty, students and policymakers on impact evaluations approaches. Amos is an EASST fellow and a passionate ambassador for institutionalization of impact evaluations and transparency in the conduct of research.

Radha Rajkotia, Innovations for Poverty Action
Radha Rajkotia is the Chief Research and Policy Officer of Innovations for Poverty Action, where she leads the strategy for IPA's evidence-to-impact work. Dr. Rajkotia is an experienced humanitarian and economic development professional, who combines expertise in strategy, operations, management, research, policy, and partnership development. Prior to joining IPA, she held the position of Senior Director of Economic Recovery and Development at the International Rescue Committee, where she worked for eleven years. She has worked in over twenty countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Rajkotia's career to date has enabled her to think creatively about how to make tangible improvements in the way that aid is delivered and test new ideas on the ground.

Ferdinando Regalía, Inter-American Development Bank
Ferdinando Regalia is the Manager of the Social Sector (SCL) at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Prior to his appointment, Ferdinando served as the Chief of the IDB Social Protection and Health (SPH) Division from 2010 to 2021. In this capacity, Ferdinando oversaw IDB support to its borrowing member countries’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the areas of social protection and health. As SPH Chief, Ferdinando and his team led the implementation of innovative public-private partnerships and results-based financing mechanisms to tackle health inequities, such as the Mesoamerica Health Initiative. From 2008 to 2009, Ferdinando served as advisor to the Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge of the IDBG, providing quality oversight of operations as well as of the economic and sector research agenda of the Vice Presidency. In 2007, he served as Chief of Social Policy and Economics at UNICEF in South Africa providing technical assistance on design, financing, and implementation of social protection programs to governments and NGOs in Southern Africa. Previously, Ferdinando worked as Social Development Specialist in the former Social Division of the Regional Operations Department 2 of the IDB, which he joined in 2000 as part of the Young Professionals Program. Ferdinando holds a PhD in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

Mauricio Santamaría, National Association of Financial Institutions, Colombia
Mauricio Santamaría currently serves as president of the National Association of Financial Institutions (ANIF). He has extensive experience in the public sector serving as director of the National Planning Department (DNP) and minister of social protection (currently the Ministry of Health and Social Protection) in Colombia. Previously, he was deputy director of Fedesarrollo, worked as senior economist at the World Bank within the Poverty Unit for the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, and also held the position of president of EConcept. At the academic level, he works as a professor of economics at the Universidad de los Andes. Santamaría holds a PhD in economics from Georgetown University.

Russell Siegelman, Stanford University
Russell Siegelman has spent over thirty years in business and technology as a manager, investor, and director. He is a Lecturer at Stanford’s School of Business where he teaches entrepreneurship. Russell has made personal investments in over sixty technology start-ups and made startup grants to several impact enterprises. He has been the Board Chair at the Global Innovation Fund and Sustainable Conservation, and a board member at Innovations for Poverty Action. He is an active donor to J-PAL. He was a Partner at KPCB, where he invested in technology startups, and before that he was at Microsoft. He earned his BS from MIT in Physics and an MBA from Harvard.

Working Group Staff

Julia Kaufman, Center for Global Development
Julia Kaufman is a policy analyst in the global health program at the Center for Global Development. Her research covers global health financing, health product innovations and supply chain, sexual and reproductive health, and the use of data and evidence in development policy more broadly. Previously, Julia worked on global health research related to frontline health care in Rwanda and child mental health in Kenya. Julia holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University.