Anna Fairbairn is an Agricultural Economist at I4DI, where she leads impact evaluations and program design for smallholder farmer interventions. Her work blends rigorous econometric analysis with deep on-the-ground operational knowledge — a combination that comes from spending years not just studying agricultural development, but building and running programs firsthand.

Before joining I4DI, Anna spent six years with One Acre Fund in Tanzania, where she rose from designing and testing agricultural innovations to serving as Deputy Country Director — overseeing 400+ staff delivering $15 million in inputs and training to 80,000 smallholder farmers. Along the way, she built and led the organization’s Impact Division, developed its long-term SROI strategy, and piloted a carbon credit scheme for smallholder agroforestry. It’s the kind of experience that means when Anna designs an evaluation, she’s thinking not just about what’s methodologically sound, but about what’s operationally real.

Anna is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her dissertation research focuses on soil heterogeneity and input profitability in Tanzania. She also holds an M.Sc. in Agricultural & Applied Economics and a B.A. in Political Science & African Studies from the University of Illinois. She is a published researcher in the Journal of Development Economics and a near-native Swahili speaker.