Dr Karen Levy
Karen is the Kenya Country Director of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a nonprofit development research organization associated with MIT’s Poverty Action Lab. Karen established the IPA office in Kenya in 2005. Since then, she has managed the growth of in-country operations to their current level, with over 85 full-time personnel working on more than a dozen projects funded by international foundations and multilaterals. Ongoing IPA research includes cutting-edge impact evaluations in the health, education, water and sanitation, and microfinance sectors.
Since January of 2009, Karen has also served as the Regional Director for Africa of Deworm the World, an initiative of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. In this role, she has worked closely with senior officials in the Kenyan government, providing technical and logistical support for the design, implementation, and monitoring of a national school-based deworming program. The first phase of the program successfully reached over 3 million children in Kenya.
In 1995, Karen co-founded the Tawasal Institute, a community-based development organization located on Kenya’s coast, and continues to serve asna Trustee of the Tawasal Foundation Trust Fund. She received a BA with Honors from Brown University in 1994, an MSc with Distinction in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics in 2000, and a PhD in Development Planning from the University of London in 2008. Karen was awarded the Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship for her doctoral research, and three consecutive Public Service Fellowships from the Echoing Green Foundation for her leadership as a social entrepreneur. She has lived in Kenya for 13 of the last 17 years and speaks fluent Swahili.