Julia Vaillant is a Senior Economist at the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, in the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa. Her research focuses on finding what works to close gender gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa. She works on several impact evaluations in the areas of youth employment and social protection, gender-based violence, agriculture, and entrepreneurship, and has experience conducting research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Benin, Mauritania, and Madagascar. She currently leads the Nigeria Gender Innovation Lab, an effort to generate more evidence on how to economically empower women in Nigeria and to promote the use of the evidence in policy. Julia has a PhD in economics from Université Paris-Dauphine.