Reehana Raza is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. She is a trained economist with research interests in institutions, political economy, human development, and service delivery. Her technical experience is in design, implementation, and evaluation of policy interventions. Before joining Urban, Raza was a senior economist at the World Bank, where she worked in the education global practice in the East and Southern Africa and South Asia region. Her portfolio was on education, skills, and labor market transitions.

Raza is also founding member, first director, and current associate research fellow of the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, an economic think tank in Pakistan financed by the Open Society Foundations that focuses on targeting economic issues that strengthen democratic foundations in Pakistan. She has also taught at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, where she was an assistant professor of economics. Her areas of teaching and research related to the economics of education, institutional economics, political economy, and economic history. Raza has worked and consulted for the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, US Agency for International Development, Department for International Development, and other bilateral agencies.

Raza holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s degree in development economics and doctoral degree in economics from the University of Cambridge.