Ardyn is an applied microeconomist specializing in economic development, education, food security, and gender equality with over 7 years of experience evaluating projects in the social sector. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Program and Policy Evaluation in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University. She is also a Research Associate at Limestone Analytics.
Ardyn has completed the design and implementation of multiple randomized control trials and mixed methods evaluations, as well as cost-benefit analysis of projects in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Her recent projects include the evaluation of World Vision UK’s Girls Education Challenge project, which involved providing teacher training and empowerment campaigns to marginalized girls and boys in rural Zimbabwe. She oversaw this evaluation as the project coordinator for the baseline, midline, and endline evaluations, and was the lead quantitative and mixed-methods analyst on the evaluation team. The evaluation also involved value for money analysis, including the development of a cost-benefit analysis model and has since been turned into several academic research projects.
During her time with Limestone, she has also coordinated the development of several cost-benefit analyses to assess the feasibility of education investments in Malawi for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre. This work was used by the Government of Malawi’s National Planning Commission to inform education policy and budget allocations. More broadly, Ardyn’s work in evaluation and cost-benefit analysis includes projects in Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Honduras, Cambodia, Brazil, Canada, Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi.
Ardyn recently completed her Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on education, food security, and gender equality, with a particular interest in how machine learning tools and text mining methods can be used to improve the design and evaluation of development projects and policies. She completed her Masters in Economics and Data Science at Carleton University, and prior to joining Limestone, she spent 3 years as a Data Scientist with Employment and Social Development Canada.
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