Experience

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  Yale Economic Growth Center

  • New Haven, Connecticut, United States

  • Deputy Director

    • Mar 2022 - Present
    • New Haven, Connecticut, United States

    Lead the Economic Growth Center’s advancement on strategic initiatives, external engagement, and research and data infrastructure. As the senior-most staff member at EGC, work closely with the Center Faculty Director on the strategic management and organizational refinement of an internationally-focused research center, with diverse funding streams, an expanding array of new programming, and a growing team.

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  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

  • United States
  • Non-profit Organizations
  • 700 & Above Employee

  • Senior Program Officer | Women’s Economic Empowerment Evidence, Gender Equality,

    • Dec 2019 - Aug 2021

    Led the expansion and refinement of the evidence base to transform programs and policies related to women’s work and women’s collectives, disseminating high-quality evidence broadly, and building a stronger research and evaluation field through both in-country and global research partnerships.• Built a portfolio of over $30M in active and designed investments generating evidence on the barriers and enablers related to women’s labor force participation and returns, and the design and multi-dimensional impact of large-scale grassroots women’s collectives.• Drove the execution of GE’s strategy on large-scale analytics around women’s economic empowerment, initiating new analysis on gender and informal economies, enterprise gaps, and the gig economy. Initiated new policy engagement and capacity-building for women’s economic advancement research in South Asia and Africa. • Strategically stewarded publication and utilization of the first large-scale evaluation of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission in India (the world’s largest network of grassroots women’s collectives covering over 70M low-income women) collaborating with research, government, and multilateral partners. • Synthesized insights across Foundation investments to ensure that findings on both women’s work and women’s collectives were captured, analyzed and the results fed back into strategic decision-making and policy advisory processes, including throughout the COVID-19 crisis. • One of 50 Foundation employees (out of 1700) invited to collaborate and present a set of pitches to Foundation leadership on transformative digital investments to advance the Foundation’s mission.

  • Research Program Officer | Financial Services for the Poor, Global Growth and Opportunity

    • Jun 2018 - Nov 2019

    Managed an $18M research and evaluation portfolio of investments within the Financial Services for the Poor (FSP) team. • Partnerships generated publications in top economics journals, foundational global datasets, and active policy dialogue on pro-poor design, government to person (G2P) payments, drivers of gender gaps, and the impact of digital financial services (DFS) on reducing poverty and improving agency.• Initiated the creation of the $7M Africa Research Initiative on Identification, Payments and Governance (DigiFI Africa) to generate government demand-led research collaborations with academia on the promise and risks of digital ID and finance across the African continent.

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  Women for Women International

  • Director | Monitoring, Research and Evaluation (MRE)

    • Jan 2015 - Jul 2017

    Guided all MRE activities, managing a core headquarters team of three staff and providing dotted-line management to six country-office M&E Managers and their field teams. Responsible for leading WfWI’s global program monitoring system, research projects, and internal and external evaluations, and building staff research and evaluation capabilities.• Launched WfWI’s first 5-year MERL strategy that provided a cohesive framework and an ambitious agenda for advancing learning in the areas of Women’s Agency, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Men’s Engagement programming. Contributed to raising $2.5M in new funding.• Built new partnerships with academia and research agencies and provided continuous guidance on evidence-based decision-making to the organization’s Country and Global Leadership Team and Global Board of Directors. More details available at: http://www.womenforwomen.org/what-we-do/impact

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  Yale Economic Growth Center

  • New Haven, Connecticut, United States

  • Initiative Director | Microsavings and Payments Innovation Initiative

    • Jun 2011 - Dec 2014
    • New Haven, Connecticut, United States

    Provided leadership, strategy, team, budget and donor management for all research programs and projects housed under the $7.2M Microsavings and Payments Innovation Initiative (MPII) at Yale, which evolved into the $10M Global Financial Inclusion Initiative (GFII)/Financial Inclusion program area at the international research non-profit organization Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). • Co-authored the extensively-cited academic review paper “Savings By and For the Poor: A Research Review and Agenda” that critically analyzed the evidence base and gaps in current savings research and practice, and presented a coherent agenda for action and research in the field. • Managed a team of ten research and policy staff at IPA in creating and executing a portfolio of over 40 research projects (primarily large-scale randomized controlled trials) across more than 14 countries. Full list of projects and papers are available at: http://www.poverty-action.org/financialinclusion • Influenced current innovation and policy dialogue on financial inclusion through speaking engagements at major policy venues that included the Alliance for Financial Inclusion’s Global Policy Forum, the Asian Development Bank’s research seminar series, the USAID MicroLinks seminar series, and PopTech.

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  Microsoft

  • Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India

  • Associate Researcher | Technology for Emerging Markets - Microsoft Research India

    • Aug 2005 - May 2011
    • Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India

    Led highly interdisciplinary research projects exploring the role of technology in enabling social and economic development and poverty reduction. Responsible for managing all aspects of the research process from design and partnership-building, through implementation, analysis, and application.• Led the design and testing of a novel accounting application on a low-cost digital slate prototype that allowed for simultaneous handwritten paper and digital entries. The innovation was recognized in MIT’s Technology Review magazine as one of 2011’s 35 top global innovations by young technologists. • Produced over eight peer-reviewed publications and numerous commentaries and technical reports. Regularly guided undergraduate and graduate interns (MIT, CMU, Cambridge, IIT, BITS, IIM) in project work. Research was showcased at corporate R&D forums (Microsoft Techfest, TechXchange). • Presented to senior Microsoft executives (Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie, Rico Malvar) and external development agencies (CGAP, BMGF, Grameen Foundation, PATH, PRADAN).