Garima Siwach

Garima Siwach is a principal economist at AIR. She specializes in research and evaluation of policies and programs specific to social protection, education, women’s economic empowerment, financial inclusion, gender and social norms, and livelihoods.

Dr. Siwach currently serves as the principal investigator on a study on community engagement for gender norms in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Project Director of the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups (ECWG), which focuses on synthesizing and strengthening research on women’s groups in India and East-Africa. As part of her role in the ECWG, she has authored studies on costs and cost-effectiveness of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in India and Nigeria, convergence of social protection programs in India, and the implications of COVID-19 for women’s economic groups in India and several countries in Africa. She is also conducting studies on measurement of the value of women’s agency in Nigeria, and gender norms influencing women’s economic participation in South Asia.

Apart from her work on women’s livelihoods programs, Dr. Siwach also serves as the quantitative lead on a cluster-randomized controlled trial to determine the impact of a technology-aided instruction program on learning outcomes among students in community schools in Zambia. She recently concluded an evaluation of the Transition Work-Based Learning Model, a program including employment strategies for transition-age youth with disabilities in Maine, United States.

Dr. Siwach completed her Ph.D. in Economics in 2017 and was the recipient of the 2017 University at Albany Distinguished Dissertation Award, and the 2018 Association for Public Policy and Management (APPAM) award for best dissertation in public policy analysis.