Lauren Edwards is a Senior Project Management Specialist within the International Education Division at RTI International with expertise in school-related gender-based violence (SGRBV), social-emotional learning (SEL), and operational implementation. Ms. Edwards designed and implemented an internally-funded research study on the feasibility of ACASI in Uganda; executed internally-funded research about school climate and impact of social-emotional learning in Malawi and Uganda, including facilitating focus group discussions in Malawi and contributing to the final report; contributed to a school-related gender-based violence literature review and conceptual framework; facilitated numerous assessor training for both early-grade reading and mathematics assessments and school-related gender-based violence data collections in various countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before joining RTI International, she also researched the internationalization of higher education, basic education issues in Francophone Africa, and the internationalization of higher education in Cuba.
Ms. Edwards currently manages the home office financial and operational support for the following activities: the Malawi Early Grade Reading Improvement Activity (MERIT), a project that is improving reading outcomes; project coordinator of USAID's Basic Education Program in Georgia, aimed at implementing sustainable student-centered reform in primary grades across Georgia; project coordinator for the Implementing the Science of Teaching grant funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is project manager for Research on Effective Education Programming (REEP) in Africa, funded by USAID.
Ms. Edwards joined RTI in 2014 and is a member of the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) and the Project Management Institute (PMI). She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
