Rachel Glennerster is the president of the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, she was at the University of Chicago. She has leveraged randomized trials to address critical issues spanning democracy, health, education, and women's empowerment and pioneered ways to shape markets to promote innovation to address global challenges including pandemics and climate change. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.

Dr. Glennerster previously served as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK. From 2004 to 2017, she served as Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a center in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence and helped pioneer the use of randomized trials in development economics.

Dr. Glennerster helped to establish “Deworm the World”, which has helped provide 1 billion deworming treatments to children worldwide, and played a pivotal role in establishing initiatives including the $1.2 billion Advance Market Commitment for a pneumococcal vaccine and the interdisciplinary Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel that provides advice to governments about the most effective education strategies.

In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She also currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa).