American Institutes for Research

Andrea Coombes is a researcher at AIR. Coombes has more than five years of professional experience in education research across the United States and internationally.

Coombes currently leads the qualitative component of a longitudinal mixed-methods study to evaluate the effects of the Plantwise program on farmer wellbeing in Kenya. She is also the qualitative specialist on the evaluation of an intervention in Nigeria to increase male participation in women’s empowerment efforts. Previously, she assisted in data collection and analysis for multiple impact evaluations, including managing data for a nine-university, five-year longitudinal randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of a program to improve gender, race, and other intergroup relations among university students in the U.S. She also contributed to program assessments of three U.S. International and Foreign Language Education programs.

Before joining AIR, Coombes performed international development policy research as a Fellow at the United Nations Information Center in Washington, DC and was part of a team that conducted intergroup relations research with university students in Beijing, China. She is fluent in Spanish.