Shelby Carvalho was a senior policy analyst with the education team at the Center for Global Development. Outside of CGD, she is also an advanced doctoral candidate, Presidential Merit Fellow, and Fulbright recipient at Harvard University. Her work focuses broadly on the political economy of education in low- and middle-income countries with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and on humanitarian and development finance and policy in situations of conflict and displacement.
Carvalho began her career in education as a teacher. Following her time in the classroom, she spent five years working with the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and Education Global Practice on projects throughout southern Africa, Ethiopia, and Mexico. She has also worked with the Education Commission as a lead researcher on secondary education finance and with the RISE (Research on Improving Systems of Education) program in Ethiopia contributing to research on the political economy of education reform. At Harvard, Carvalho teaches a course on international aid to education. She holds master’s degrees in Global Policy Studies from the UT Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs and in Education Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a BA in Government from The University of Texas.
