Laura Ralston works in the Social Development practice of the World Bank, where she works on social inclusion, poverty reduction, human development and labor markets. She works to develop collaborations across the World Bank and with external partners, with a focus on innovation and sharing of ideas. Towards these goals, she has coordinated impact evaluations across sectors in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and East Asia, and has performed conflict and fragility analysis and monitoring in Africa and the Middle East. She is currently working in Indonesia on the topics of social and economic inclusion in rural areas.

Laura received her PhD in empirical applied microeconomics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work at MIT studied the determinants of conflict and violence using a wide range of methodologies including quasi-experimental regression analysis, lab experiments, geo-spatial data science and statistical learning.