Tommie Yeo Thompson is a Social Scientist at I4DI, where he brings rigorous quantitative methods to bear on questions of program impact and effectiveness. With nearly a decade of experience spanning impact evaluation, behavioral economics, and policy research, Tommie designs and implements evaluations that help development organizations and governments understand whether their investments are working — and for whom.

Tommie’s career has taken him across an unusually wide range of development challenges. At Social Impact, he managed quasi-experimental evaluations for USAID and MCC — from analyzing reading outcomes for over 20,000 students in Ghana to measuring the economic effects of water infrastructure improvements in Jordan. At the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi, he shifted into behavioral research, establishing a research unit on women’s economic empowerment and designing experiments on gender norms and dignity in the workplace. He went on to direct a $150,000 research initiative creating the first global database of master-planned cities, authored a five-year strategic plan for the Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority, and helped facilitate the founding of the African School of Economics’ Zanzibar campus.

Tommie holds an MPP with a specialization in econometrics from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He has lived and worked in the Philippines, Kenya, and Zanzibar for a combined 18 years.