Emily Gustafsson-Wright

Emily Gustafsson-Wright is a senior fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She specializes in applied microeconomic and policy research within the fields of education, health, and early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income country contexts. She is widely recognized as a global expert on innovative financing mechanisms including public-private partnerships, payment by results, and social and development impact bonds. She has also led the Childhood Cost Data initiative at Brookings since 2014 with the goal of increasing the volume, quality, and use of data on the costs of education and ECD, including developing the Standardized ECD Costing Tool (SECT) and its successor, the Childhood Cost Calculator (C3).

With 25 years of experience in development, her previous professional experience includes working at the World Bank, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Center, and the Amsterdam Institute for International Development. She holds a doctoral degree in economics from the Tinbergen Institute at the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Master of Science in applied economics and finance and a Bachelor of Arts in global economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.