Saumitra Jha is an associate professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of economics and of political science, and convenes the Stanford Conflict and Polarization Lab. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law within the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In 2020–21, he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Jha’s research has been published in leading journals in economics and political science, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Development Economics, and he serves on a number of editorial boards. His research on ethnic tolerance has been recognized with the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 and his coauthored research on heroes with the Oliver Williamson Award for best paper by the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics in 2020. Jha was honored to receive the Teacher of the Year Award, voted by the students of the Stanford MSx Program in 2020. Jha holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford GSB, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. He has been a fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. Jha has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/WTO, the World Bank, government agencies, and for private firms.

My research explores the interaction between global and domestic dynamics that affects the provision of quality education for all. Recently, I focus on understanding how social, political, economic, health, and environmental crises shape education policy initiatives, coordination, and negotiations among education policy actors, including international, national, subnational, and school actors. I use an interdisciplinary approach based on political science and sociology along with mixed methods.

Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). I've worked full-time on evaluation since 1999 with GEF and UNDP (where aI served as Evaluation Advisor and Deputy Director of IEO). In these functions I've managed and conducted numerous evaluations, focusing especially on environment-poverty interlinkages, which is my major interest. I spent the 1990s at UNU as Academic / Sr. Academic Programme Officer for environment and sustainable development. I've written extensively on issues related to environment, sustainable development, environmental hazards and evaluation. I've had visiting positions at Kyoto University, Rutgers University and the University of Montana. A native of Finland, I was educated at the University of Helsinki and Lund University, and I hold a PhD in Social and Economic Geography.

A Surgeon with unique experience in Healthcare Digitalization, An natural communicator with trained interpersonal, team building, negotiation, presentations, convincing and analytical skills.Domain Leader (Partner) in the Healthcare Industry. (15 years) Spectrum – Strategy (corporate/ portfolio, customer, distribution, private equity, organization, procurement), private equity/ corporate due diligence, performance improvement, business innovation, and startups evaluation. Advisory to multiple investors in the healthcare industry for them to gain market advantage by value creation. + My goal is to demonstrate how a large-scale data-driven approach will lead to smarter decision-making, more proactive care, and improved health outcomes and lower costs for patients and populations. + My focus is on healthcare data interoperability, involving traditional data sets (EHR, claims) along with newer ones (biosensors, patient-reported outcomes, social determinants of care “-omics”), and the maturation of a healthcare cloud-based platform that is secure, scalable, & intelligent.  + My efforts is to connect the quantitative analytic dots to clinical endpoints hence creating values for all the stakeholders. I wish to bridge the inputs from IoT, wearables, data inputs (EHR) to the outputs in clinical decision support, TDABC, supply chain and quality efficiency with cost reduction thus bringing transparency and empowerment to the last mile.