#PolicyProfile: Cassandra Azumah, MPA ’27

“Being from Ghana, my path to public policy has been shaped by working across countries, sectors, and institutions — and seeing firsthand what it takes to turn good ideas into lasting change. After graduating from the London School of Economics, I spent a year and a half at the South Centre in Geneva, exploring how countries in the Global South can learn from one another’s development experiences. From there, I moved to Senegal, where I worked with IDinsight on monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategies for education and health programs. I later returned to Ghana to support the Ministry of Education through Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), helping design a monitoring and evaluation strategy for a national early childhood education curriculum as it moved from a pilot program to a national scale. Working alongside NGOs, the Ghana Education Service, and the Ministry of Education, we helped secure about $120 million in funding from the Global Partnership for Education for foundational learning — ensuring early childhood education was embedded in Ghana’s national agenda. I also briefly worked in Sierra Leone with the Ministry of Agriculture on the Feed Sierra Leone initiative, supporting efforts to strengthen food security. Across all of this work, one theme kept emerging: implementation. Meaningful programs often struggle at scale, not because of poor intentions, but because of low institutional capacity and the real constraints governments face. NGOs play an important role, but lasting, widespread change depends on effective government institutions. That realization pushed me toward public policy and institutional strengthening. Before coming to SPIA, I spent most of my time thinking about Ghana. Here, I’ve gained a broader, comparative perspective — seeing how countries confront similar challenges and the different paths they’ve taken to overcome them. That lens has pushed me to think more expansively about where my skills can have the greatest impact, beyond any single country.” 

Top photo: Cassandra Azumah MPA ’27 works alongside members of the community to improve education and health programs.