Nishtha Kochhar is an Extended-term Consultant (Economist) at the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. She is contributing to the analytical work on the programmatic poverty programs in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. She is also supporting the implementation of the COVID-19 monitoring telephonic surveys in South Asia Region. Prior to this, she led the implementation of various large scale household surveys in India, such as impact evaluation of Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) project, under the Social Observatory, an initiative of the World Bank. Nishtha holds a Masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics and is a PhD Candidate in Economics at Georgetown University.