Shobhini Mukerji

Shobhini Mukerji is the executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia (SA) office based at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR). Shobhini oversees the pan-India operations of J-PAL SA, which has partnerships with over 16 state governments and several central government agencies.

Shobhini works closely with donors, policymakers, civil society partners and research institutions to promote collaborations to increase the use of evidence in decision-making and scale-ups of successful social programmes in India and the South Asia region. Shobhini has over 18 years of extensive research and evaluation experience, ranging from designing and managing large scale primary data collection and analysis, to providing advice to organisations and governments on research design, monitoring and evaluation strategies. Her research includes papers on primary education interventions in India that have been found to be highly impactful and have been scaled up across several Indian states and in parts of Africa, to reach over 40 million children.

Shobhini sits on the executive board of CARE India, the largest non-profit in India focusing on empowerment of women and girls through programmes in health, education, livelihoods and disaster preparedness. She began her career working at Pratham, one of the largest non-governmental organisations of India, working towards universal quality primary education to ensure every child is in school and has mastered basic literacy and numeracy. Previously, Shobhini has served on various expert committees for reviewing research proposals and on advisory boards of non-profits.

Shobhini holds a Master’s degree in social research methods from the London School of Economics with a focus on social policy and statistics.