Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals

As a senior economist at the World Bank, Shwetlena Sabarwal has led education programs in Bangladesh, Egypt, Nepal, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and Uganda, helping improve learning outcomes, student retention, and teacher performance for poor and disadvantaged students. 

Dr. Sabarwal also leads a large, multifaceted research program focused on identifying and scaling up effective education programs in a timely and cost-effective way. Her work has helped educational policies and programs focus on evidence-based interventions, such as cash transfers for girls’ education in northern Nigeria, textbook delivery in Sierra Leone, and public-private partnerships in education in Uganda. 

During the school closures of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sabarwal helped create programs to conduct outreach to adolescent students in Bangladesh and provide phone-based tutoring in Nepal. She helped conceptualize the idea of learning-adjusted years of schooling, which aids policymakers in thinking not just about years of schooling but also the quality of that education. The framework is now a core part of the World Bank’s Human Capital Index, which ranks countries on how well they support education and health for their population. She also led the drafting of the World Bank’s education policy response to COVID-19 and generated critical conversation around learning losses caused by COVID-related school closures. 

In naming Dr. Sabarwal as a recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals, the selection committee acknowledges her outstanding contributions to improving education around the world.