Vijayalakshmi Iyer is Director, Policy (Scale) at J-PAL South Asia, where she leads ASPIRE, J-PAL South Asia’s evidence-to-scale unit. She drives the unit’s strategy, fundraising and portfolio management, and oversees scale-up initiatives across rural livelihoods, early childhood education, emissions trading and gender equity. She is also a member of J-PAL South Asia’s Senior Management Team.

Prior to her current role, Vijayalakshmii served as Associate Director, Policy (Scale-Ups), where she built and led the ASPIRE scale-up function. Before joining J-PAL South Asia in 2023, she was Global M&E Head at STIR Education, leading monitoring and evaluation for government-led behaviour change programmes at scale. She has also held roles at Quest Alliance and Azim Premji Foundation, working across education, livelihoods and systems change in India.

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