Vyjayanthi Sankar
Founder & Executive Director, CSSL

A Leading Education, Assessment and Management expert, Vyjayanthi’s clients include the Brookings Institution, The World Bank, UNICEF, National and State Governments, several NGOs and CSR. Vyjayanthi is an Ashoka Fellow for 2015-16. In 2013-14, Vyjayanthi was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Humphrey Fellowship by the US Congress and spent the year in Penn State University for her academic work and at The World Bank in Washington DC. Vyjayanthi was part of the start-up team in Educational Initiatives (EI) as Vice President from 2003-14, and founded its Large Scale Assessment Division and built it to become the leading assessment provider in South Asia.  She was member of Govt of India’s SSA Joint Review Mission in 2014 and advisory board member for the Educational Survey Division of NCERT in 2012.  She is an expert member for the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organisation Secretariat’s SEA-PLM, a regional learning assessment for South East Asia. Vyjayanthi also supports the Learning Metric Task Force Learning Champions and advises 21 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa for Learning Assessments.

Subir V. Gokarn
Executive Director, International Monetary Fund & Director, CSSL

During 2013-15, Subir was Director of Research, Brookings India and a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution. During 2009-12, he was Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, where he oversaw Monetary Policy, Research, Financial Markets, Communications and Deposit Insurance and represented the Reserve Bank at the G-20 Deputies’ forum. Earlier, he was Chief Economist of Standard & Poor’s Asia-Pacific (2007-09), Executive Director and Chief Economist of CRISIL (2002-07), Chief Economist at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi (2000-2002) and Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai (1991-2000). He has a doctorate in economics from Case Western Reserve University, USA and was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Yale University, USA in 1997-98. During 1996-2009 and then again during 2013-15, he contributed a fortnightly column on current economic issues to the Business Standard.  He was a  member of the National Security Advisory Board during 2013-15 and is currently a member of the Expenditure Management Commission. 

Amita Chudgar

Associate Professor of Public Policy,
Michigan State University, USA

Amita Chudgar is an associate professor of education policy at Michigan State University. Amita trained in Economics (Mumbai University), Development Studies (Cambridge University) and Economics of Education (Stanford University). Amita is on the Board of the Comparative and International Education Society and she regularly consults with various UN agencies including the United Nations Children’s Fund and UNESCO’s Section for Teacher Policy and Development. Her scholarship is guided by an interest in ensuring that children and adults in resource-constrained environments have equal access to high-quality learning opportunities irrespective of their backgrounds. Her work has been supported by several prestigious research awards and grants, including the National Academy of Education/Spencer foundation postdoctoral award and the American Educational Research Association’s research award. Some of her current work focuses on teacher policy, school choice, and secondary education outcomes. Amita uses large-scale national and cross-national datasets to inform this research. As a teacher and a scholar, she  leverages data to inform educational research in developing countries

Geeta Gandhi Kingdon

Professor, UCL Institute of Education,
​University College London

At UCL, Geeta holds the Chair of ‘Education Economics and International Development’. Prior to this, she worked for 10 years as faculty at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. Her research interests are centred in Economics of Education. Geeta advises the World Bank, European Union (EU) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) on their education aid to developing countries.  In India, she has frequently been a member of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry’s ‘Joint Review Missions’ for SSA and RMSA. Geeta is a member of the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board, and the Government of UP’s Advisory Committee on Basic Education.  She has a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and MSc and DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.  In 2013, Professor Kingdon was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Kingston University London for “her outstanding contributions to education and development”. Geeta is also President of the City Montessori School, Lucknow, the world’s largest school and which won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education.

Hoi K. Suen

Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology, Penn State University, USA

Dr. Hoi K. Suen is Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University.  His areas of specialization include psychometrics, educational assessment, and evaluation.  He is the author of two books and about 200 book chapters, journal articles and technical reports; and about 150 professional conference presentations on issues related to instrument development, behavioral assessment, performance assessment, educational and psychological testing, early childhood assessment, and evaluation.  He consults for about 60 public and private organizations, including various state departments of education, international and national testing/certification agencies, health organizations, universities, military organizations, and private corporations in the U.S., South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and China.  He has served or is serving as a Guest Editor, Consulting Editor, Editorial Board member or reviewer for about 35 research journals. He has also delivered over 50 invited speeches and has conducted numerous training workshops throughout the U.S. and in several other countries.