I am an Education Economist (Dphil. in Economics, University of Oxford, 2006, Rhodes Scholar, Pakistan 2000) with more than 16 years' experience working on gender, labour markets, student achievement, teacher effectiveness, political economy of education systems and the role of private schools and non-state actors in education delivery in developing countries. I am also the Managing Partner of an Education Think Tank - OPERA, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Education (UCL), a Senior Research Fellow at Idara-Taleem-o-Agahi (ITA), an associated researcher at the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge and a Research Fellow at IDEAS and CERP, Pakistan. I have over 18 years’ experience of advising governments, international agencies, NGOs and other organisations on education and policy in various contexts. Recent examples of projects I have been involved in include the following: a DFID-funded programme evaluating Activity Based Learning, ABL, in Tamil Nadu, India; learning outcomes of children in Pakistan; advising ARK PEAS on how to evaluate their PPP schools in Uganda; undertaking a systematic review of teacher effectiveness policies at scale (worldwide, DFID-funded); analysing teacher politics in South Asia (The Education Commission); undertaking a rigorous review of evidence on PPPs in education (Ark-funded); Researcher on an ESRC-DFID funded 3 year project investigating effective teaching and learning outcomes in India and Pakistan. I have experience of designing successful funding proposals and managing diverse teams of researchers to achieve deadlines. Current and ongoing work: Country Lead (May 2023-2025) - Uganda and Nepal lead for evaluating GPE’s new Operating ModelGirls’ education thematic lead (2023-2025) - DARE Pakistan Gender expert - FCDO (Jan 2023 - July 2023) Team Leader - FCDO's Girls' Education Challenge Independent Evaluation (2020-2025)Leading FCDO's Responsive Synthesis work on Girls' Education - (October 2020 - March 2021)Short Term Consultant (The World Bank) - leading on the formative evaluation of GPE’s support for Response to COVID-19 Crisis (Oct. 2020- December 2021).