Michelle Kaffenberger

Michelle Kaffenberger is the Director of Evidence Translation for the What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford, and Program Director at the SSRC. Her work focuses on making research on improving foundational learning actionable for policymakers and practitioners.

Previously, Michelle served as Deputy Director of Research with the RISE Programme at the University of Oxford, where she led research on aligning education systems for learning and oversaw the program’s strategic and research activities. She has also been a Senior Research Advisor at the World Bank, helping to launch a global partnership for social protection system reform.

Michelle has advised bilateral and multilateral organizations, major philanthropies, NGOs, and private sector actors. Her research has been featured in The Economist, Financial Times, CNN, and national newspapers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Indonesia. She holds a PhD in Global Development from the University of East Anglia and an MA in Development Economics from Vanderbilt University.

Noam Angrist

Noam Angrist is the Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education. His interests focus on bridging the gap between evidence on ‘what works’ to enable young people to thrive and translation into scaled intervention and policy.

Noam has published in leading academic journals including Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. In addition, he has published across disciplines, including education, economics, public health, and the natural sciences. His research includes primary research on programme and policy effectiveness via randomised trials and natural experiments, building global databases and public goods, and synthesising evidence to inform policy.

He has consulted for the World Bank Chief Economist, FCDO’s Chief Economist, and led key aspects of the development of the World Bank Human Capital Index education pillar. This includes the development of Harmonized Learning Outcomes and a new global measure of education, Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling, which has been adopted as an indicator by the World Bank, FCDO and USAID to track education systems at the country level.

Noam led the development of UNICEF’s evidence menu for the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Hub (FLN) hub in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). He also led the academic research underpinning the inaugural report of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, which reviewed over 150 impact evaluations in education and provided timely recommendations on cost-effective ‘smart buys’ to improve learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.

He is the co-founder of Youth Impact, one of the largest NGOs dedicated to scaling-up health and education programmes backed by rigorous randomised trial evidence. Headquartered in Botswana, the organisation has scaled evidence-based programmes to over 100,000 youth across ten countries.

Youth Impact has pioneered the use of A/B testing in the social sector to optimise evidence-based programmes on the path to scale, conducting 25 rapid randomised trials in just 36 months, in addition to conducting multiple large-scale randomised trials in partnership with J-PAL and the World Bank. The organisation has solidified multi-year partnerships with UNICEF, USAID, and the Brookings Institution and signed an MOU with the Botswana government to scale-up evidence-based programmes nationally.

During Covid-19, Youth Impact produced the world’s first evidence on distance education, published in Nature Human Behaviour, and has since re-tested and scaled the programme in five additional countries (India, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and the Philippines) with governments, NGOs, and multilateral partners within 18 months. These efforts represent some of the largest, fastest, multi-country evidence bases ever generated in education.

Noam has a BSc in Mathematics and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD (DPhil) from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Angrist was a Fulbright and Rhodes scholar, and his work has been recognised by Forbes, the Skoll World Forum, and the World Economic Forum.

Bea Ani-Asamoah

Bea Ani-Asamoah is a Senior Education Specialist at the What Works Hub for Global Education. She works with governments and partners to strengthen how evidence is generated and used to inform policy, guide practice, and support large-scale implementation. She leads research calls, supports policy-aligned synthesis, and helps design hands-on technical assistance approaches that enable systems to adopt, adapt, and scale effective practices.

Bea’s career has focused on helping education systems embed and institutionalize approaches that work to achieve outcomes. She previously established and led Laterite’s West Africa office, coordinating multi-country research portfolios and system-strengthening initiatives, including research within Rwanda’s national-level Leaders in Teaching program.

She also co-led the national scale-up of Zambia’s Teaching at the Right Level ‘Catch Up’ program with VVOB, strengthening ministry capacity to deliver and sustain the model. Earlier, with Worldreader, she supported governments and partners to integrate digital reading into public schools and libraries, developing a district-wide in-school delivery model in Ghana. Most recently, she advised on implementation research funds at Brink Innovation.

Bea has worked across ten countries and brings an approach grounded in system scaling and evidence-informed, context-responsive practice. She holds an MPhil in Education (Globalization and International Development) from the University of Cambridge, as well as a BS from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a BA from Mount Holyoke College.

Laura Conrad

Laura Conrad is a Senior Programme Manager with the What Works Hub for Global Education.

Laura’s career has focused on strengthening foundational learning outcomes globally. Previously, she was a Senior Advisor in USAID’s Center for Education where she supported the design and implementation of large-scale foundational learning programs in over 10 countries, with a specific focus on using structured pedagogy to strengthen foundational literacy instruction. In addition, she worked for USAID implementing partners, where she managed large-scale foundational learning programs in Rwanda, Liberia, Malawi, Pakistan and Zambia, working closely with government partners and organizations to ensure approaches were grounded in global evidence and adapted to the local context. In this role, she also managed USAID and FCDO program evaluations in Pakistan and Zimbabwe, working closely with donors, governments and partners to translate the evidence to inform program implementation.

Laura started her career as a classroom teacher in Washington, DC. She taught literacy and numeracy across multiple grades at the elementary-level, including a bilingual public school, where she gained experience supporting literacy acquisition for multilingual learners.

Laura received a MSEd in International Educational Development from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in International Studies from American University.