Vinayak Bhardwaj

Vinayak Bhardwaj is the Executive Director of J-PAL Africa at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. He oversees the strategic and technical components of J-PAL Africa's work, and helps cultivate relationships and partnerships with policymakers across the Africa region to help inform evidence-based policy.

Prior to joining UCT and J-PAL, Vinayak worked as a Senior Health Economist at the University of Witwatersrand. Before that, he worked at Medecins Sans Frontieres in various capacities, including policy advocacy for the South African government.

He holds a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from UCT, a Master's and Doctoral degrees in Public Health (with a focus on statistics and health economics) from Johns Hopkins University.