Keren Zhu

Keren Zhu is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D. student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research interests include infrastructure development in emerging markets, program evaluation, the Belt and Road Initiative, China's engagement with the world, international development,
China-African relations and U.S.-China relations. She is particularly interested in evaluation design for megaprojects under the Belt and Road Initiative. Zhu is an adjunct lecturer at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, where she teaches a graduate course on program and
policy evaluation. Prior to joining RAND, she was the international affairs manager at Research and Development International, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where she worked on humanitarian and development policy research and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. As a consultant at the International Labor Organization, she managed their public-private partnership project database and evaluated project effectiveness. She has fieldwork experience in China, Ghana, Benin, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Pakistan. Zhu is fluent writer in English and Chinese, and she speaks English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and French. She holds a M.Sc. in social anthropology from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in English from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.