Sharada works at the Digital Development Global Practice as a Young Professional, supporting World Bank operations on digital infrastructure in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific regions. In addition, she contributes to analytical and advisory work across Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Latin America focused on evaluating investments that seek to increase broadband penetration and works on data governance issues globally. She contributed background papers to the World Development Report 2021 evaluating the effects of data infrastructure and on the enablers and safeguards for trusted data sharing.
Sharada Srinivasan joined the World Bank from the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, University of Pennsylvania where she served as a Research Fellow. At 1 World Connected, a global research project, her research focused on the empirical validation of innovative initiatives that address supply-and-demand-side challenges to improve broadband adoption globally. She has conducted fieldwork in rural Rwanda, India, and Vanuatu focused on understanding the link between digital infrastructure rollout and development outcomes.
She was part of the EQUALS Research Coalition on Access, served on the IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee’s Assessment sub-committee and is part of the United Nations’ Dynamic Coalition on Innovative Approaches to Connecting the Unconnected. In the past, she has engaged with regulatory barriers to Internet deployment in the developing world, cybersecurity and encryption policy in Europe, and debates around network neutrality and zero-rating while at the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. She holds a Master of Public Policy from the National Law School of India University Bangalore, alongside an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.