Shobhini Mukerji

Since 2011, Shobhini Mukerji is the Director of the South Asia Regional Center of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center dedicated to applying research to poverty reduction. She started her career in 2002 at Pratham, one of India's largest NGOs working for universal and quality primary education. Shobhini holds a Master's degree in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics. She is passionate about the use of evidence and data in policy making and advises multilateral organizations and donors on the effectiveness of policy spending. With Nobel laureates such as Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, she has worked on large-scale randomized trials of basic education in India and developed literacy programs that have proven effective and are currently being scaled up in several Indian states and parts of Africa to reach more than 60 million children. She is also a member of several advisory and steering committees, including Community Jameel and Jameel Arts and Health Lab, and is committed to integrating scientific knowledge into health care and social welfare.