Nancy Rydberg

Senior Technical Associate Director

Dr. Nancy Rydberg is a comparative and international education policy researcher. Currently, she serves as the Senior Technical Associate Director for the USAID-funded Supporting Holistic and Actionable Research in Education (SHARE) program. Nancy has conducted research on education policy, youth, and gender in Uganda, Argentina, and the USA and has supported research projects in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Egypt. She has worked as part of international teams designing, implementing, and evaluating educational initiatives and youth livelihood projects with Save the Children and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

Nancy has a PhD in Educational Policy Studies and in Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA in Development Management and Policy from Georgetown University and the Universidad Nacional de San Martin.  She received her BA from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.

Her PhD dissertation research, funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award, was based on an 18-month ethnography that explored the impacts of educational policies and socioeconomic and gender inequalities on primary schooling in post-conflict northern Uganda. Nancy’s MA thesis examined non-governmental programming to promote the rights of street children in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nancy is fluent in Spanish and Acholi (a dialect of Luo) and proficient in Portuguese.