Global Change
Data Lab

Hetan Shah is chief executive at the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences. He is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE Data Science Institute, a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King's College London, and a Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. Hetan was appointed in 2024 by the UK Parliament to the board of the National Audit Office, the UK’s independent spending watchdog. Hetan serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the UCL Policy Lab and the Resolution Foundation.

Rachel Glennerster is the president of the Center for Global Development and a trustee on the Center for Global Development Europe's board of trustees. Prior to joining CGD, she was at the University of Chicago. She has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women's empowerment and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges including pandemics and climate change. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.

Dr. Glennerster previously served as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK. From 2004 to 2017, she served as Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a center in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence and helped pioneer the use of randomized trials in development economics.

Dr. Glennerster helped to establish “Deworm the World”, which has helped provide 1 billion deworming treatments to children worldwide, and played a pivotal role in establishing initiatives including the $1.2 billion Advance Market Commitment for a pneumococcal vaccine and the interdisciplinary Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel that provides advice to governments about the most effective education strategies.

In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She also currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa).

Andrew Dilnot is the Warden of Nuffield College Oxford. He was chair of the UK Statistics Authority from 2012 to 2017, the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘More or Less’, the Principal of St Hugh’s College Oxford from 2002-2012, and the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 1991-2002.

Claire Melamed leads the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data’s Secretariat. She was previously Managing Director of the Overseas Development Institute, has worked in the office of the UN Secretary General, and for a number of NGOs. She is an Affiliated Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and serves on the Board of Full Fact. She is based in London.

Michael Blastland is a writer and broadcaster, best known as the creator (with Andrew Dilnot) of More or Less on Radio 4, and as presenter and producer of numerous other series. In a varied career, he’s also written several popular science books about numbers, chance, risk, and related subjects; was a board member of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication; has advised large-scale research projects; taught for many years on BBC courses for senior journalists and elsewhere; and most recently served as a non-executive director and deputy chair of Royal Papworth Hospital, and co-authored a BBC inquiry into the impartiality of its coverage of tax, public spending, borrowing, and debt.

Max Roser leads the project Our World in Data. He founded this project in 2011 and for several years was the sole author.  His research focuses on poverty, global health, humanity’s impact on the environment, technology and the history of living conditions. He is Executive Co-Director of Global Change Data Lab as well as Programme Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development at the University of Oxford.

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina is a Senior Researcher and Content Lead at Our World In Data, as well as Head of Operations and Executive Co-Director of Global Change Data Lab. His academic work focuses on economic development, the public sector, education, and a wide range of related topics.

Wendy Carlin was a founding member of our Board of Trustees. She is a Professor of Economics at University College London, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is also leading the CORE Project, an international educational project to reform the undergraduate economics curriculum. The CORE Project produces open-access e-books used in universities around the world. She is also a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility.

David Hendry was a founding member of our Board of Trustees. He is co-director of Climate Econometrics at Nuffield College and was previously Professor of Economics at Oxford University where he was Chairman of the Economics Department from 2001—2007. He was knighted in 2009, and he is an Honorary Vice-President and past President of the Royal Economic Society.

Stefano Caria was a founding member of our Board of Trustees. He is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick specializing in development economics. He is also affiliated with J-PAL, CEPR, CAGE and the EEE program at STICERD.