Vinayak Bhardwaj

Headshot of Vinayak Bhardwajt

Executive Director, J‑PAL Afrique

Vinayak Bhardwaj is the Executive Director of J-PAL Africa at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He oversees the strategic and technical components of JPAL Africa's work, and helps cultivate relationships and partnerships with policymakers across the Africa region to help inform evidence-based policy.

Prior to joining UCT and J-PAL, Vinayak worked as a senior health economist at University of Witwatersrand. Before that he worked at Medecins Sans Frontieres in various capacities, including policy advocacy to the South African government.

He holds a master's degree in chemical engineering from the Unviersity of Cape Town, master's and doctoral degrees in public health (with a focus on statistics and health economics) from Johns Hopkins University.