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Bala Venkatachalam

Executive Director of Pratham USA.

Bala Venkatachalam

Executive Director of Pratham USA.

Bala Venkatachalam is the Executive Director of Pratham USA. He was involved with Pratham’s programmes in India between 2003 and 2006 as National head of Operations and has previously worked across corporate finance, strategy consulting, and a technology start up as a co-founder. Most recently he worked with the Monitor Group in India where he was Engagement Manager and led a team to identify and develop new business opportunities in affordable urban housing.

David Sears

Director of Finance and Operations at J-PAL.

David Sears

Director of Finance and Operations at J-PAL.

David Sears is Director of Finance and Operations at J-PAL. David has worked in international development for many years. His work experience includes five years in Morocco with the US Peace Corps and USAID, and managing World Bank and USAID-funded projects worldwide in the areas of small business development, industrial restructuring, and management training.

John Floretta

Director of Policy and Communications for J-PAL.

John Floretta

Director of Policy and Communications for J-PAL.

John Floretta is Director of Policy and Communications for J-PAL. He works with policymakers and J-PAL affiliated researchers, and staff to disseminate lessons from randomised evaluations and promote evidence informed decision-making and scale-ups of successful social programmes. John was Deputy Director of J-PAL South Asia during 2011-2015, which included working closely with Pratham.

John Mugo

Executive Director of Zizi Afrique Foundation.

John Mugo

Executive Director of Zizi Afrique Foundation.

Dr. John Mugo is the Executive Director of Zizi Afrique Foundation. He is a seasoned researcher and policy advisor with a credible record of scholarship. He currently works on the holistic development of children and youth, to equip them with competencies for learning, working, and living. Based in Nairobi, John works on generating large-scale evidence on values and life skills, and linking evidence to wider system change. Formerly, John headed the Uwezo learning assessments in East Africa and chaired the Department of Special Needs Education at Kenyatta University.

Kwame Akyeampong

Honorary Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Sussex.

Kwame Akyeampong

Honorary Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Sussex.

Prof. Kwame Akyeampong is an Honorary Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Sussex, and co-chair of the World Bank and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP). He has published widely in international journals on education and development. His research interests cover teacher education in the global south, evaluation of large-scale education programmes, policy and practice of education in developing country context, and mathematics education.

Madhav Chavan

President and co-founder of Pratham.

Madhav Chavan

President and co-founder of Pratham.

Madhav Chavan is President and co-founder of Pratham. After obtaining a PhD in chemistry from Ohio State University and serving on the faculty at the University of Houston, Dr. Madhav Chavan returned to India where he worked in the slums of Mumbai as part of the National Literacy Mission. In 1995, as a result of a UNICEF initiative, he co-founded Pratham to address problems of universal primary education in Mumbai.

Rachel Glennerster

Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago

Rachel Glennerster

Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago

Rachel Glennerster is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Division of Social Science at the University of Chicago. She uses randomized trials to study democracy and accountability, health, education, microfinance, and women’s empowerment mainly in West Africa and South Asia. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics. Previously, she was the Chief Economist at the Department for International Development (DFID). From 2004 to 2017 she was Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).

Rukmini Banerji

CEO of Pratham

Rukmini Banerji

CEO of Pratham

Rukmini Banerji is CEO of Pratham, where she has been part of the leadership team since 1996. Since 2005, she has led the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). In 2008 Rukmini was the inaugural recipient of the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar Award conferred by the Government of Bihar, India. She is internationally recognised as a champion and expert of foundational learning. Dr. Rukmini Banerji was awarded the 2021 Yidan Prize, the world’s highest education accolade, in recognition of ground-breaking work addressing a crucial piece of the education puzzle: improving the quality of education and outcomes for learners at scale.