Manali Sovani is an Associate Fellow at NCAER’s Centre for Economic Growth, working at the intersection of firm growth, labour productivity, and urban development.

She has over five years of research and policy experience spanning academia, international organisations, and industry. Before joining NCAER, she was a Research Associate at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where she worked on labour and gender economics questions using administrative and survey data across Sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked in the private sector at Amazon in New York, applying causal inference and machine learning methods; and contributed to field experiments in India at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. She taught “Introduction to Development Economics” at Tufts University to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Her research examines how infrastructure, policy, and climate shocks shape labour market and educational outcomes with a particular focus on gender. Her work establishes a causal link between Delhi Metro access and women’s college attainment, evaluates India’s No Detention Policy, and studies gendered responses to extreme heat in Nigeria.

She holds a PhD in Economics and Public Policy from Tufts University, USA.