Leah Shiferaw

Leah Shiferaw’s work focuses on nutrition assistance, employment and training, and other programs that support people and families with low incomes.

She specializes in evaluation design, quantitative analysis, and the use of administrative and survey data to evaluate the impacts of public programs.

Since joining Mathematica in 2020, Shiferaw has worked on studies spanning SNAP, school nutrition, workforce development, poverty and food security, and family support. She has extensive experience collecting, validating, linking, and analyzing administrative data to generate actionable insights for program decision making and improvement. Currently, she leads data processing and analysis tasks for the National School Foods Study. She previously directed a national study of SNAP benefit redemption patterns and served as deputy project director for the SNAP Employment and Training Rapid-Cycle Evaluation, working with state and local programs to design and test operational improvements. Her other work has included conducting quantitative analyses for the Evaluation of SNAP Employment and Training Pilots for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Administration, leading the impact evaluation for the Reentry Projects Evaluation for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office, and leading evidence syntheses for the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse for the Administration for Children and Families.

Shiferaw holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Emory University.