Sara Nadal

My trajectory makes sense, but it's really random.

I studied international relations in college.

I always thought that my dream job would be to work at the World Bank or something like that.

I got a job with a nonprofit organization that did really interesting behavioral science research internationally.

They sent me to Lima, Peru.

I spent two years down there.

I grew the organization from two people to 40 people worldwide.

went back to Harvard to start my master's.

And then I spent my summer at the World Bank thinking I was like, I had arrived.

This was my dream job.

I was bored out of my mind.

It was far too bureaucratic for me.

I wanted to do something much faster paced.

Got back to finish my master's.

It was September of 2008.

The economy crashed.

And my advisor says, well, listen, you have tons of ideas that you want to research.

Why don't you just stick around and do a PhD?

And I thought that was a great idea.

So I continue to be really interested in this question of kind of broadly, how can you use data to improve bottom of the pyramid?