Reham Rizk is head of the Social Planning and Development Unit at the Egyptian Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, and an associate professor of economics at the University of London and in the master’s program in Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

She is also an invited researcher at J-PAL Middle East and North Africa at the American University in Cairo and the co-Founder and director of the Egypt Impact Lab, which aims to strengthen the effectiveness of Egypt’s poverty reduction policies, and a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum. Her current focus includes conducting an ongoing randomized evaluation of Unpacking Employment Support: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment with J-PAL MENA and constructing Egypt’s Multidimensional Poverty Index with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.

Previously, she was an associate professor of economics at the Universities of Canada in Egypt and the British University in Egypt. She was also a research fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan. She also served as Senior Economist at the Tahya-Misr Fund.

Her work focuses on establishing sustainable partnerships among universities, government, and development practitioners to drive behavioral change, advance policy-driven research and foster effective planning for development initiatives promoting employment, microenterprise development, female empowerment, family development, education, and health.