Kaitlynn Saldanha

Kaitlynn is an American international development practitioner and researcher working at the intersection of innovation and market-based approaches to poverty alleviation. She recently completed an MPhil in education, globalization and international development at the University of Cambridge where she focused on education policy, innovation, and public-private partnerships as a means of expanding access to quality education, particularly among the most disadvantaged. For her dissertation, she spent four weeks doing fieldwork with the Akanksha Foundation, a network of high-performing Indian public schools providing holistic education to marginalized youth in Mumbai and Pune. Prior to Cambridge, Kaitlynn worked at Teach For America where she built a community of Silicon Valley-based champions advocating for educational equity in the San Francisco Bay area. She also led San Francisco’s +Acumen chapter, a self-organized, volunteer-run group educating and engaging the Bay Area community around Acumen’s mission to change the way the world tackles poverty. Kaitlynn worked in Kampala on implementing a UN foundation innovation grant, and spent a year in Bangalore designing and piloting solutions for the low-fee private school sector. On behalf of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre of the University of Cambridge, she currently supports groups of international education experts launched at the 2017 Global Education and Skills Forum working toward research-based solutions on key global education issues. Kaitlynn earned a BA in international politics and economics at Middlebury College, and plans to continue working in research and international development.