Marla Spivack is an international development practitioner and researcher with more than a decade of experience in program and policy design, management, and analysis. Her work has focused on service delivery in the education and social protection sectors. Prior to joining the World Bank, she was jointly appointed as the Research Manager of the RISE (Research on Improving Systems of Education) Programme and a Research Fellow with the Building State Capability Program at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. In this role she led a team synthesizing RISE research into policy messages and engaging with stakeholders to promote a systems-thinking approach to tackling the learning crisis. In the past she has worked on social protection, rural development, monitoring and evaluation, and microcredit programs, supporting government agencies in India, Mexico, and Zambia. She has also contributed to work on migration and development with researchers at the Center for Global Development. Spivack holds a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA in Economics from Tufts University.