Women's Empowerment, Population Dynamics, and Socioeconomic Development (2025)
Chapter: Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
Appendix A
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
ANITA RAJ (Co-Chair, she/her/hers) is Nancy Reeves Dreux Endowed Chair in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the executive director of the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University. Previously, she was Tata Chancellor Professor of Society and Health and the director of the Center on Gender Equity and Health at the University of California, San Diego. Raj is a research scientist trained in developmental psychology and public health with a multidisciplinary research focus on gender equity in global health and development. She has led federal grant and foundation-funded studies on gender theory and measurement science, sexual and reproductive health, maternal and adolescent health, women’s empowerment, and gender inequalities, including gender-based violence and child marriage. She created and leads the EMERGE platform, which provides open access evidence-based measures on gender empowerment, built indicators on gender empowerment in national surveys, and offers technical assistance to survey researchers and implementers working on gender empowerment. Raj also created and leads the Violence EXperiences study to assess state-wide data on experiences of violence, discrimination, and mental health, to support data-driven policy decision making on these issues. She has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Georgia.
SUSAN CROSBY SCRIMSHAW (Co-Chair, she/her/hers) was president of Russell Sage College, president of Simmons College, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and associate dean of public health and associate director of the Latin American Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research includes community
participatory research, research methods, reproductive health, health communication, and social determinants of health internationally and with Latino and African American populations in the United States. Scrimshaw is an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow and American Anthropological Association fellow. She serves on the board of directors of Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Scrimshaw also served on the Chicago and Illinois State Boards of Health, on the New York State Minority Health Council, as chair of the Association of Schools of Public Health, and on the board and as board president of the US-Mexico Foundation for Science. She lived in Guatemala until age 16. Honors include the Yarmolinsky Medal (National Academy of Medicine), the Margaret Mead Award (Society for Applied Anthropology/American Anthropological Association), and Hero of Public Health gold medal (Mexico). She has a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from Columbia University. Scrimshaw is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
RAGUI ASSAAD (he/him/his) is a professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is also a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum (ERF) in Cairo, Egypt, and a nonresident research fellow of the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany. Assaad previously served as regional director for West Asia and North Africa at the Population Council. His current research focuses on labor markets and human development in the Arab World, with a focus on youth and gender issues as they relate to education, transition from school to work, labor force participation, employment and unemployment, informality, migration, and family formation. Under the auspices of ERF, Assaad led the design and implementation of several nationally representative longitudinal surveys of labor market conditions in Arab countries. He earned the Outstanding Research Award of the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, and the Award for Global Engagement for exceptional contributions to global education, research, and engagement at the University of Minnesota. Assaad received a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from Cornell University.
SONALDE DESAI (she/her/hers) is a professor of sociology at University of Maryland and the center director of the National Council of Applied Economic Research–National Data Innovation Centre, New Delhi. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, she was an associate in the Policy Research Division at the Population Council. Desai is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social inequalities in developing countries, with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. She studies inequalities in education, employment, and maternal and child health outcomes by locating them within the region’s political economy. While much of Desai’s
research focuses on South Asia, she has also engaged in comparative studies across Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She currently leads the India Human Development Survey of over 40,000 households. Desai has been elected as the president of the Population Association of India and was the president of the Population Association of America. She has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Population. Desai received a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University and post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago and RAND Corporation.
ALETHEIA DONALD (she/her/hers) is a development economist and thematic leader within the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab in the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa. At the World Bank, she leads research projects across Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Turkey, and the Philippines as well as the cross-institutional Measures for Advancing Gender Equality initiative. She is a nonresidential fellow at the Center for Global Development as well as an affiliate of the Institute of Labor Economics. Before joining the World Bank, she was a research fellow at Harvard University’s Evidence for Policy Design and head of research for Empower Dalit Women of Nepal. Donald’s research spans the study of poverty, social norms, labor, and methodological work on survey data collection. Her current work centers on issues of gender and economic activity, including the effects of marriage, redistributive norms, mechanization, childcare, women’s land rights, and intrahousehold cooperation. Donald holds a Ph.D. in economics from Sapienza University.
PASCALINE DUPAS (she/her/hers) is professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. Previously, she was professor of economics and the Kleinheinz Family Professor of International Studies at Stanford University and the faculty director of the Stanford King Center on Global Development. Dupas is a development economist seeking to identify interventions and policies that can help reduce global poverty. Her ongoing research includes studies on the gendered impacts of education policy in Ghana, family planning policy in Burkina Faso, digital credit regulation in Malawi, and government subsidized health insurance in India, among others. Dupas is co-chair of the health sector at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, on the board of directors of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research. She is a National Science Foundation CAREER award winner, a fellow of the Econometric Society, a former Sloan fellow, and a former Guggenheim fellow. Dupas obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France.
KELLI STIDHAM HALL (she/her/hers) is the associate dean of research, Thomas Keller Professor of Diversity, and professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. Previously, she was an associate professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Heilbrunn Department of Population & Family Health. A social epidemiologist and advanced practice nurse, her research program focuses on the social and structural determinants of maternal-child and reproductive health in the United States and globally. Hall studies the effects of poverty, policies, structural racism, health systems factors, and toxic social stress on disparities in maternal mental health, maternal morbidity, and mortality, and the role of community-driven solutions, multilevel interventions, and integrated models of care. She is currently the multiple principal investigator of Columbia University’s National Institutes of Health U54 Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence and is the former principal investigator and founding director of the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast at Emory University. Hall serves on the editorial boards of the Maternal Child Health Journal and Contraception, on the board of directors of the Society for Family Planning, on the executive committee of the National Medical Committee of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and as section counselor for American Public Health Association’s Population, Sexual and Reproductive Health Section. She has a Ph.D. from Columbia University in maternal child health (nursing) and epidemiology. In 2020, Hall was elected as a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine.
POONAM MUTTREJA (she/her/hers) is executive director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI), a leading nongovernmental organization in the fields of population dynamics, gender equity, and sexual and reproductive health. Before joining PFI, she served as the India country director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative. For over 40 years, Muttreja has been a strong advocate for women’s health, reproductive and sexual rights, and rural livelihoods. She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything). The program has introduced an artificial intelligence–powered chat bot, SnehAI, a first of its kind initiative for a behavior change communication initiative in India. She has an M.A. in public administration from Harvard University.
LUCA MARIA PESANDO (he/him/his) is an associate professor of social research and public policy at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and was a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Before joining NYUAD, he was an assistant
professor of sociology and demography in the Department of Sociology and Centre on Population Dynamics at McGill University. Pesando’s research lies in the areas of social, economic, and digital demography. He is interested in issues of family poverty, inequality, gender, social stratification, intra- and intergenerational processes, technology adoption, and interactions between life-cycle events and human capital accumulation. Pesando’s overarching research aim is to produce better knowledge on the link between family change, gender, and educational inequalities in areas where these dynamics are changing rapidly and scant research is available. Most of his work takes an international comparative perspective and focuses on low- and middle-income contexts undergoing economic, social, and demographic transformations, mainly across Sub-Saharan Africa. At McGill, he was nominated as William Dawson Scholar (outstanding early-career researcher), and he was recently awarded a fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation. Pesando has a Ph.D. in demography and sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
GOLEEN SAMARI (she/her/hers) is associate professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California. Previously, she was assistant professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Samari was also a faculty affiliate of the Columbia University Population Research Center, and faculty in the Columbia Program on Forced Migration and Health and Columbia Program on Global Health Justice and Governance. Her research focuses on several dimensions of social inequities and reproductive and population health. She considers how structural oppression based on race, gender, and migration shapes reproductive and population health both domestically and globally, with a particular focus on communities in or from the Middle East and North Africa. Cutting across all her research areas is an interest in the way structural constructs are measured and policy relevant research. She has received several honors for her early career contributions to health equity, and she is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations. She has a Ph.D. in public health and demography from the University of California, Los Angeles.
TOM VOGL (he/him/his) is associate professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. He was previously assistant professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. As a development economist and economic demographer, Vogl studies health and population issues in low- and middle-income countries. His recent research has focused on the co-evolution of fertility and the education of adults and children, the intergenerational persistence of child mortality, and the aggregate consequences of differential fertility. Vogl is a fellow of the Bureau for
Research and Economic Analysis of Development and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he serves on the Advisory Board of the Study Group on Gender in the Economy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
YOHANNES DIBABA WADO (he/him/his) is a research scientist in the Sexual, Reproductive Maternal, Newborn Child and Adolescent Health unit of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) based in Nairobi, Kenya. Before joining APHRC, he worked as senior advisor for research and evaluation with Ipas in Ethiopia and was a lecturer in population studies at Jimma University in southwest Ethiopia. Wado is a population health researcher with experience in research, as well as monitoring and evaluation of programs in the areas of population and sexual and reproductive health and rights. He has experiences in leading and implementing large national surveys, longitudinal studies, randomized controlled trials, systematic and scoping reviews, and analysis of large surveys. Currently, Wado provides technical leadership to research and evaluation projects on population health and sexual and reproductive health and rights, including on family planning, unsafe abortion, and adolescent health. He has a Ph.D. in public health from Addis Ababa University.
KATHRYN YOUNT (she/her/hers) is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Global Health and sociology at Emory University. Her research examines the intersections of women’s health, empowerment, and exposure to gender-based violence, including mixed-methods randomized controlled trials of social-norms and empowerment-based programs to improve these outcomes in underserved populations. Yount has received funding from U.S. federal agencies, private foundations, and foreign agencies to conduct research in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and underserved communities in Atlanta. She was as an elected member of the board of directors for the Population Association of America and is a frequent advisor for women’s empowerment and gender-based violence prevention initiatives funded by the UKAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Yount was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At Emory University, she is a recipient of the Women of Excellence Award for Mentoring, Marion V. Creekmore Award for Internationalization, and Eleanor Main Graduate Mentor Award. She holds a Ph.D. in demography from Johns Hopkins University.
