J-PAL North America Staff Spotlight: State & Local Innovation Team

I have an academic research background, which reflects my interest in research and belief in evidence-based decisions. I focused on political science in undergrad and in my PhD. One thing grad school taught me was I didn’t want to be an independent researcher working in isolation. I wanted to do something on the ground, with a team, and have direct policy relevance. J-PAL was a place where I could do that. 

The healthcare hotspotting project, which I worked on when I first arrived, remains my favorite. I showed up when the actual research was complete, so I was able to quarterback the last part—managing the publication and dissemination process. It was challenging because we found a null result for a popular program. That meant considering the interests of our implementing partner while trying to share the results of the study and make a point about the value of randomized evaluations, all while dealing with the unfamiliar world of medical journal publishing and media embargoes. Ultimately, we were able to make a big impact while maintaining nuance. Two years later, people continue to reach out about the study, often with an interest in evaluating their own similar interventions. 

I feel like both people within and outside academic research don’t often think that research needs management. It’s not a role I was aware of before coming here. But it’s super important to keep a project moving forward. I coordinate with researchers to make sure everyone is on the same page, and I work with partners to make academic analysis plans feasible on the ground. I even play “pretend lawyer” in trying to get institutions to sign data use agreements or secure IRB approval. There’s a lot of negotiating to make sure a project gets completed. I’m often putting out fires that no one knows about and solving problems before they arise, and that’s very satisfying to me.

We don’t pay enough attention to the 1800s in the US, especially Reconstruction. We miss that era in history class; it’s not part of our American mythology. It was an era where we attempted to construct a pluralistic society and multiracial democracy, which saw a lot of progress but ultimately led to failure. It would be interesting to see that period and understand how it’s instructive to the current time and place. It’s important in this role too, as someone trying to understand policy and poverty alleviation in the US, to consider similar efforts in other periods and learn from them. 

I have two favorite things. The first is the people and community. I have some of the most intelligent and supportive coworkers I could hope for. There is great mentorship in the office but also an amazing support system outside of work, which has been so helpful because I moved to a new city for this position.

The second is the mission of reducing poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Academic research can be hard to digest, so I love working on the communications team to reach people across platforms and share research results in an accessible way—whether through a tweet, a blog, or an op-ed. 

In undergrad, I studied anthropology and public health, with a minor in Middle Eastern studies. I always knew that I wanted to work in public health but was still figuring out how I wanted to do that. Initially, I was interested in humanitarian work and health systems for migrants and refugees. I learned a lot about global health systems while studying abroad in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Ghana, and Europe, and thought I would go into global health work. 

But when Covid-19 happened, there was increased visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans—which is very relevant to my own community. Those events made me want to focus on domestic issues, which led me to J-PAL North America. 

Even though I studied global health, my previous experience still applies because we can learn from other countries about what works. My background in qualitative research also comes up a lot in staff conversation, as some other members of our policy team don’t have a background in economics.  We can have open conversations to constructively critique the work we do and look at our studies from different perspectives. 

If you care about a job, you can do the job. It’s important to be passionate and eager to learn—I come from a qualitative background and had to study randomized evaluations before my interview, but I learned! 

I wasn’t fully confident during the application and interview process because I kept thinking: “I’m not an economist; I don’t have my master’s; I don’t have the same experience as the other staff.” Now I know there are so many staff members here to support me as I learn new things. 

Instead of feeling uncomfortable because you don’t know something, be open to exploring a new field. It’s easy to want to be the smartest person in the room, but if you’re willing to learn, you have more opportunities for growth and change. 

I graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst where I studied political science. I served as an AmeriCorps member as my first job out of undergrad. A large part of my service was focused on food security for the local community. While I really loved working in direct service, I was frustrated because there always seemed to be systemic issues that I couldn’t fix at the direct service level.

So I decided to go back to graduate school at NYU Wagner for my Master’s in Public Administration. I was then introduced to the world of evidence-based policy through my first job post-grad school, where I worked to connect individual researchers and with state, local, and federal policymakers. Then three years ago I came to J-PAL, where I now lead our Health Care Delivery Initiative. 

I don’t think I’d be here if I hadn’t gone to the particular grad program I attended. For one, it was there that I was exposed to Poor Economics and the work of J-PAL. My graduate work also opened my eyes to a different way to think about policymaking, beyond the party politics that we see on the news or that I was exposed to as an undergrad. Policymaking is about building consensus, and while evidence isn’t the only tool to build consensus, it can be a really compelling one. 

I’ve really enjoyed working with policymakers on custom trainings. Policymakers will come to us and express interest in evidence but don’t know where to start. Those trainings open an opportunity to problem-solve collaboratively with a non-research audience. While we can’t solve every barrier to evaluation in a short session, I’m proud of the work we do to explain why evaluation is important, how it can be used in their work, what the limitations are, and the viable ways to work around those limitations. 

More generally, I love that J-PAL convenes a group of researchers who are trying to make their work useful and relevant to a community beyond other researchers. Research for research’s sake is great, but I think it’s important that it gets used and doesn’t remain behind a paywall. 

I would love to go back to France in the 1400s and follow Joan of Arc around. There is such a mythology around her and it’s hard to disentangle her Saint story from her story as a real, living woman. She convinced really powerful men to do things that didn’t make any sense, and I’m fascinated by that. 

I first learned about J-PAL during my sophomore year of undergrad from one of my economics professors. I was interested in more practical applications of economics, and she recommended I look at J-PAL. After looking at the website, J-PAL just seemed right in line with my thinking about how we should use evidence and quantitative research to tackle development and poverty alleviation. The next semester, I read Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. It was my favorite book⁠—I’ve probably read it three times since. So I had heard about J-PAL very early on and it became one of my goals to work at J-PAL one day.  I was very excited when I got this position at the North America office. At orientation, I became known as the “J-PAL Groupie” among the staff. 

I knew that in my career I wanted to make an impact somehow.  Prior to coming here, I worked in direct service. I’ve worked at an immigration firm and I also tutored at a high school with a high immigrant population. That work was really gratifying, but it was also really exhausting. At the end of the day, I knew I couldn’t change the systemic issues they were facing. I realized I wasn’t personally suited for direct service.

In this role, I love working with data, no matter the topic. But being able to tell a story with the data and answer big questions makes me feel that I can still make an impact without burning myself out. 

One thing that I’ve really taken in is that it’s really important to get perspectives from people who have very different life experiences at each step of the research process. People will interpret results so differently depending on their life experience, and that’s really important to acknowledge. 

The other lesson I find important is that you can rely on the people you work with. If there’s a coding problem or if there’s something that isn’t coming out right, it’s always better to get input from someone else. The expertise of your co-workers is one of your greatest resources, especially here at J-PAL North America. 

It changes all the time. I usually work in our spare room, and that works pretty well, but it’s also where my partner works. If we ever have meetings, I move downstairs to the living room and work at the folding table there. And if we don’t have childcare on a given day and my toddler is napping, I need to work on the other side of the apartment. I’ve really just had to make any space work!

My past academic experiences were very qualitative, so I was excited to learn about quantitative research at J-PAL. I’m glad to support an infrastructure of creating evidence and using that evidence to inform policy. Along with that, I was excited about the opportunity to gain nonprofit management skills on the Finance and Operations team. I’m interested in nonprofit management and am in the process of founding a very small nonprofit, DAWNetwork, so I was eager to learn the ins and outs and strategies of fundraising.

I’ve pretty consistently worked at the nexus of education, development, and peace studies. My first job out of college was at the Social Science Research Council with Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa, a fellowship program for African PhD candidates studying topics related to peace, security, and development. That was my first experience with rigorous research. I also developed a deeper understanding of the importance of centering a decolonial perspective and promoting research from the Global South. 

After I finished my master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University of Amsterdam, I worked in policy in DC. The policymaking process can be like throwing darts at the wall to see what sticks, and it’s not always clear that what “sticks” will have a positive impact. It was frustrating when policymakers and advocates lacked a rigorous understanding of the topics relevant to the policies they were making. I saw policies go through that were not effective or had unintended consequences. I think rigorous research can play a significant role in ensuring that policies have the intended impact. 

I often work from my couch so I can look out my window. I’m known for my bright blue wall. In our “home office” there’s a whiteboard, where I write my big picture goals, and a print from a local artist. My workspace isn’t complete without my dog Buster, who is ever-present and, most of the time, barking.

There was a student movement in Nazi Germany called the White Rose; they were a non-violent resistance group that opposed the Nazi regime. At the time, there was little political resistance to Nazism within Germany and occupied territories—most resistance came from partisans and was often centered on militant approaches. Now, there’s so little talk about nonviolent political resistance. I’d be interested in going back and meeting the students and developing an understanding of their exceptional bravery and commitment.

The two continuing threads in my career have been a focus on social change and environmental sustainability. After starting out at a small nonprofit working to increase the sustainability of consumer products, I headed to grad school to study international development. Soon after I graduated, I worked abroad with an international nonprofit in Malawi and Botswana on programs ranging from disaster risk reduction to nutrition. I quickly learned how critical evaluation is to helping organizations better understand their impact, but that conducting rigorous evaluations is challenging and not always standard practice in nonprofits. When my family moved back to the United States, I decided to transition out of direct implementation and focus on how to support organizations in conducting rigorous evaluation.

In my current role, I look not only at how impact evaluations can be conducted effectively but also at how they can influence policy and programs on the ground. As the manager of our Energy, Environment, and Climate Change team, I also think a lot about how and where randomized evaluations can inform environmental policy and help communities hit hardest by the effects of climate change.
 

I love that I get the opportunity to help colleagues from across the organization share their work with a broader audience. It’s incredibly fulfilling to watch team members succeed in getting their messages across, whether through a video clip, a great op-ed, or a captivating webinar. I am also so inspired by our communications team. It’s exciting to have such committed, thoughtful colleagues who constantly find innovative ways to share the stories of our work and how we are making an impact. It’s incredibly rewarding as a manager to see my team champion new areas of work and execute ideas I never would have thought of myself. 

My son has always been fascinated by classical music. When he was just a year old, he was the only kid transfixed by a string quartet at an outdoor picnic. My father-in-law (who is immensely cooler than me) recently signed him up for cello lessons. It was a bit of a rocky road at first, as he’s only five, so I am now also learning to play the cello and practice with him every day. I never thought that I would be learning a musical instrument right now, but I really love it. I feel like it’s such a great life lesson–you can do anything with patience and practice. 

I went to Northeastern University in Boston, where I studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. The core thing I gained was the belief that to change systems in the world, you have to be able to talk across disciplines and understand the fundamental assumptions and questions that others are grounded in. 

I did an internship at J-PAL North America in my fourth year. It was my first real exposure to how economics can answer policy questions and impact real people, which shaped many of my career goals. 

After graduating, I worked for an experiential entrepreneurship program at Northeastern.  That role taught me a lot, but I had a growing desire to work in an organization whose mission aligned with more of my values. Supporting students in pursuing their goals was a bright spot in that role, but I wanted more. That’s how I ended up back at J-PAL

The work culture at J-PAL is driven by the people. Everyone who works here is bought into our mission and our values. That extends to the way we do our work, which involves being kind, a lot of humor, and creating space for everybody to be themselves. J-PAL is also an environment where we’re able to take a lot of responsibility on projects that we’re interested in and run with them. 

First of all, there are lots of opportunities for continuing learning, including taking classes at MIT (such as the Data, Economics, and Development Policy MicroMasters) to expand technical skills and knowledge.

Through working on our communications team, I’ve gained on-the-job exposure to different frameworks and concepts in strategic communications, much of which has been new to me.

Finally, J-PAL is also so consistently collaborative that I have learned a lot more about how to effectively work with others—and how to do that differently with different people and in different situations. 

I like to read. One of my favorite books is Braiding Sweetgrass by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. I probably read it once every year now; it’s about her career as a botanist and how she has sought to blend Western “objective” scientific methods with indigenous ways of knowing.  

I also love being outside, especially in the spring and summer. I bike, I play a lot of basketball and volleyball, I love a good park or beach day. When I can’t be outside, I like to play board games, especially collaborative ones (Hanabi and Mysterium are two favorites!). 
 

A growing number of state and local government leaders are leveraging data for decision making and working to build rigorous evaluations into their policies and programs, tackling issues ranging from homelessness and job training to education and health care. Often, leaders make policy choices without the benefit of knowing which approaches have been tried and proven to be effective, either in their jurisdiction or elsewhere. Many state and local governments do not have the in-house expertise or resources needed to design and carry out rigorous evaluations. 

Over the past five years, the State and Local Innovation Initiative has supported governments by building their capacity to run randomized evaluations to generate new evidence on how to effectively address critical social issues. To date, we have partnered with over twenty state and local governments to develop and run randomized evaluations of promising programs and policies. 

J-PAL North America aims to support states and localities in utilizing ARP funding in a way that advances evidence-based approaches and understanding of social challenges. To date, we have partnered with over 20 state and local governments to develop and run randomized evaluations of promising programs and policies. J-PAL North America can support ARP-related efforts by:

• Funding new rigorous evaluations 
• Providing technical assistance to governments 
• Facilitating strong researcher-government partnerships with the mission of policy evaluation
• Offering capacity building resources such as custom training on evaluation-related topics and research project management support

Our research network includes academic researchers with deep expertise in a range of topics relevant to ARP programming. We can work to establish new research-practice partnerships between our network of researchers and our government partners. By leveraging our infrastructure and deep experience, we can move quickly to help state and local governments use ARP funds to embed randomized evaluation into social policy programs. 

Promoting researcher-practitioner partnerships is key to the State and Local Innovation Initiative’s work. For example, we provided funding and technical assistance to the Minnesota Department of Management and Budget (MMB) and the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy to address dangerous opioid prescribing and facilitate safer prescribing that limits risk of overdose and death with an evaluation of the state's prescription monitoring program. J-PAL North America provided funding, evaluation design support, and identified a researcher interested in leading the evaluation. As a result of this successful partnership, MMB and their research team launched a randomized evaluation, which J-PAL North America continues to support. The ongoing study is evaluating the impact of sending informational letters about the dangers of prescribing opioids simultaneously with other drugs, such as benzodiazepines and gabapentinoids, on reducing overprescribing. MMB’s researcher-practitioner partnership serves as an important model for how state and local governments can work with researchers to address pressing social issues.

In addition to supporting evidence generation, J-PAL North America can help governments ensure that ARP funds are directed toward evidence-based interventions by highlighting existing programs with a strong evidence base. For example, J-PAL North America recently published an evidence review showing the promise of sectoral employment training programs and exploring common features of effective programs. Sectoral employment programs train job seekers for high-quality employment in industries considered to have strong labor demand and career growth. These programs offer a pathway to higher-wage jobs for workers who may face barriers to employment—typically those without college degrees. The evidence review summarizes academic literature on four randomized evaluations of nine sectoral employment programs throughout the United States. The evaluations find that sectoral employment programs increased earnings, educational credentials and certificates attained, and the share of participants working in higher-wage jobs. Longer-term research suggests that the increases in earnings persist over time.

J-PAL North America is also providing governments with policy outreach and implementation support to scale evidence-based tutoring programs. J-PAL North America's Evidence Review, The Transformative Potential of Tutoring for Pre K-12 Learning Outcomes: Lessons from Randomized Evaluations, informed the allocation of state funds to support the implementation of evidence-based tutoring in Colorado and California by demonstrating the powerful impact of tutoring programs on learning outcomes. In 2020, J-PAL North America staff worked with the California governor’s office to incorporate tutoring into Assembly Bill 86, including $460 million for hiring paraprofessional tutors. To help districts implement high-quality tutoring, we are providing technical support to the California State Board of Education and other stakeholders in designing evidence-based tutoring programs. 

Directing ARP funds towards the implementation of evidence-based policies and evaluation of ongoing programs can radically reduce poverty and address long-standing social disparities across the United States. When informed by rigorous research, state and local governments are better positioned to make difficult decisions as to which policies yield the biggest impact on their communities and can provide long-term insights for state and local government leaders. For state and local governments who would like to learn more about incorporating evidence into their policy portfolio, we also offer custom training on interpreting and using data to inform policy. Researchers and local governments interested in learning more about J-PAL North America can visit the J-PAL North America website, subscribe to the State and Local Innovation Initiative newsletter, or contact State and Local Innovation Initiative Lead Louise Geraghty.