Poornima Kharbanda

Poornima has over a decade of dedicated experience in the education and skills sectors across low- and middle-income countries. Her core areas of expertise include supporting education innovations to scale, education financing, policy design, strategy modelling, market research, and monitoring and evaluation.

In her current role as Senior Manager at the Global Schools Forum (GSF), Poornima leads cohorts of the Impact at Scale Labs, through which GSF identifies and supports high-impact education organisations to expand their reach and deepen their outcomes. She also spearheads initiatives on blended and impact-linked financing to improve learning outcomes for children in low-income communities.

Previously, as a management consultant with KPMG, Poornima worked with central and state governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, and private education providers to design and implement large-scale education and skilling programmes. Passionate about problem-solving and using evidence for systems-level change in education, Poornima has also launched an online portal for volunteer management and project tracking for non-profits, and has provided pro bono consulting support to think tanks and NGOs in the areas of child rights, education, and gender.

She holds an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Delhi.