Nicole Catrina Santos

Nicah Santos is a Policy Manager at J-PAL Global, where she collaborates with researchers, policymakers, and NGOs to ensure education policies are driven by rigorous scientific evidence from randomized evaluations. She manages the Post-Primary Education Initiative and supports the Learning for All Initiative, helping to a pipeline from evidence generation to large-scale policy implementation. Nicah also identifies and authors Evidence to Policy case studies of evaluations that have successfully influenced broader public policy.

Prior to joining J-PAL in 2023, Nicah served as a strategy consultant for Teach for the Philippines. She has also led the Filipino Young Global Leadership Program for the Philippine Living Heritage Initiative, designing identity-development programming for diaspora youth. Nicah's systems-level policy work is grounded in her frontline experience as an educator. She taught high school English literature and communication in Manila for four years. As a research fellow with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, she developed evidence-based policy recommendations for the City of Portsmouth, Virginia, aimed at reducing youth gun violence. 

Nicah holds a master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she concentrated in Global, International, and Comparative Education with a focus on policy analysis and program evaluation. Nicah graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of the Philippines.

In her free time, Nicah enjoys cooking elaborate meals, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and finding new ways to make her child laugh.