Fareeha Armaghan

Fareeha Armaghan

Research Fellow

Dr. Fareeha Armughan is a PhD Economics, specializing in Financial Inclusion and Governance. Her PhD thesis is on Financial Inclusion process in Pakistan under Supervisors from State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). Professionally she has 14 years of work experience, where for 7 years she worked in the Commercial & Islamic Banking and Leasing sector of Pakistan at various positions at Head Office & Branch level, where she managed portfolios of Consumer banking, Corporate banking and Consumer and Industrial leasing. While working in a leading commercial bank, she played the lead role in designing and launching of the second ever consumer financing project in Pakistan by banking sector. She also worked in Government sector, managed a Public Sector Development Project (PSDP) (Capital Cost $154 Mill) where she gained exposure to policy making.

Dr. Fareeha is a trainer of BCURE (Building Capacity Using Research Evidence), a program of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD), J.F. Kennedy School of Public Policy, Harvard University. She received Training of the Trainers (ToT) by faculty of Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy, and delivers multiple in class-sessions of Evidence based policy to all tiers of Civil Services of Pakistan (Commons Training Program (CTP) at Walton Academy, Lahore; Senior Management Course (SMC) and Mid-Career Management Course (MCMC) at National Institute of Management (NIM). She also attended J.F. Kennedy School of Public Policy, Harvard University, in 2018 for the high-powered program of Rethinking Financial Inclusion. She recently completed The Public Leadership Credential (PLC), a year long, Public-Policy & Evidence program, conducted by Faculty of Harvard – Kennedy School of Government. She also performed the role of Teaching Fellow for the 5 day ‘Evidence Based Program Design Workshop’ by Harvard Kennedy School, Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), MIT, CLEAR and CERP that takes place annually at Lahore in December.

She is also Member, Board of Studies & Admission Committee-PIDE (Economics & Finance); Visiting Faculty PIDE (taught MPhil Economics & Finance) & Visiting Faculty of Economics & Finance (Graduate/Under Graduate Programs) at number of Universities in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Dr. Fareeha works in the capacity of Research Fellow-Economic Cluster at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), a leading policy research institute & Think-Tank of Pakistan & South Asia. Her core areas of research are Financial Inclusion, Evidence, Education, Social Protection, Environment and Health. She worked on the Karandaaz study of “Detailed Assessment of Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) beneficiaries for Financial Inclusion” as Financial Inclusion Expert. The broader objective this assignment was to assess the suitability of BISP, one of the largest Social Protection program by Govt. of Pakistan and in South Asia as a platform to promote basic and digital financial inclusion and other tools of women economic empowerment. Currently, she is performing an Impact Evaluation-Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) concerning secondary education in South Punjab, Pakistan, awarded by EdTech Hub Consortium (by ODI-UK) as lead-investigator & another with CAREC Institute, China, on ‘Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI)