Building Inclusive Digital Economies

Featured Advisor: Savita Bailur

Research Director at Caribou Digital

Savita is a Research Director at Caribou Digital. She has worked with clients including Omidyar Network, the World Bank and UNICEF while at Caribou. She has around fifteen years of experience on user research in digital development, ranging from gender and access to mobile technology to the identification of marginalized/vulnerable populations in a digital age. She speaks fluent Hindi and Spanish and conversational French, has lived in India and Honduras and has worked in countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America, including India, Brazil, Cote d'Ivoire, Lebanon, Thailand and Kenya. Savita's expertise is qualitative research - conducting interviews and focus groups and analysing these through storytelling and narrative analysis. She has also previously worked on digital governance, telecenters, gender and digital entrepreneurship, community radio and mobile internet use. She has worked with organizations including UN Women, the World Wide Web Foundation, Aptivate, mySociety, the World Bank (Global Governance Practice in DC), Microsoft Research India, Commonwealth Secretariat, USAID (Honduras) and Panos. Savita is a Visiting Fellow at the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics (LSE). She was previously a tenure track academic - a co-Program Director for the MSc Management in Information Systems: Development and Change at the University of Manchester and Assistant Professor in ICTs and Development at the University of Manchester. She has also taught in the Information Systems Group (Management Department) and Media and Communications Department at LSE, most recently as course convenor and lecturer on the MSc course on Policy and Practice in ICTs and Development. She holds a PhD and MSc in Information Systems from the LSE as well as degrees from the University of London and University of Cambridge. She has several publications, including two World Bank publications: Evaluating Digital Citizen Engagement: A Practical Guide (2016) and Closing the Feedback Loop: Can Technology Bridge the Accountability Gap (2014). She has also had papers published in the International Journal of Communication, Government Information Quarterly, Information Technology and International Development, Gender, Technology and Development and has spoken at multiple conferences. She is a member of Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Community and several design research groups. Savita is based between London and New York.

When ID works for women: Experiences and challenges of women in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka