Rachel is a Senior Education and Social Development Adviser at the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) working in the Research and Evidence Division (RED). She is the Global Education Research Lead for the What Works Hub for Global Education. Throughout her career, Rachel has blended research and international development to address equity in service delivery and work to enhance evidence-based policy making with governments and civil society organisations across South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She represents FCDO on the Secretariat for the Global Evidence Education Advisory Panel, which documents best practice of ‘what works’ to combat the global learning crisis. In 2014, she established the Building Evidence in Education global group with the World Bank, USAID, and the UN, that continues to improve standards of research in the sector, catalyse co-ordination of financial resources, and build capacity for cost effectiveness analysis. Her particular focus for the What Works Hub for Global Education is on the regional research hubs in India, Kenya and South Africa, to support stronger evidence uptake in partnership with Coalition members the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, and USAID. She is the FCDO research lead with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Jacobs Foundation and provides strategic oversight on the UKAid agreements with the British Council, Learning Generation Initiative, UNICEF Innocenti and UNESCO–IIEP.
Previously, Rachel served as the social development adviser in the Western Balkans and Nepal and senior human development adviser for DFID in Ghana and was seconded to UNICEF in New York to support the UNGEI initiative. Rachel serves on STIR Education’s Global Council and she was an Advisory Member for the Brookings Institution Scaling Initiative. She represents RED on the World Bank’s Foundational Learning Trust Fund Council.
