Rukmini Banerji has been with Pratham Education Foundation in India since 1996. She became CEO in 2015 and stepped off this role at the end of May 2026. Rukmini has extensive experience in programme design and implementation and in building partnerships on scale with state governments in India. Rukmini also led Pratham’s research activities, including the well-known Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) effort, from 2005 to 2014. Over the last two decades, she has been a key team member (often principal investigator) in a series of evaluations (RCTs) done on Pratham’s education interventions by JPAL. Rukmini was trained as an economist (St Stephen’s College, Delhi School of Economics, and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar). In 1991, she completed her PhD at the University of Chicago in education.
In 2008, Rukmini was awarded the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar by the Government of Bihar. She was the first recipient of this award. She is also the 2021 Yidan Prize awardee for education development. She has been a member of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP). Originally from Bihar, she is now based between New Delhi and Pune. Rukmini writes frequently on education in both Hindi and English and enjoys creating stories for children.
