Hazal Colak Oz is a quantitative research and strategy lead at Development Analytics. With her near-decade experience as a social policy researcher, she has worked on various policy topics ranging from poverty and cash transfer programs to education outcomes of children. Hazal has been an integral part of various project teams, undertaking responsibilities in managing technical workstreams, contributing to ex-ante and ex-post large-scale evaluations and providing her quantitative expertise in micro-level and administrative data analysis for social policy research.

Hazal’s work spans numerous countries such as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Lebanon, Malawi, Nigeria, and Türkiye, collaborating with institutions including UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, the World Bank, IFRC, and the European Commission. She has played crucial roles in projects like revising the targeting approach for multipurpose cash assistance programs and emergency social safety nets (ESSN) in Türkiye, Lebanon, and Iraq. Her work involved designing innovative targeting approaches and developing machine learning models to predict poverty within the targeted populations of these countries, coupled with targeting error analyses.

Hazal’s contributions also include designing and implementing quantitative methods to measure both monetary and multidimensional poverty, and tailoring social assistance programs and shock responsive policies to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations. Her ongoing PhD research focuses on analyzing the simulated impact of climate change on poverty in Malawi and Nigeria, further showcasing her commitment to this policy area.

In addition to her project work, Hazal leads the design and continuous enhancement of the Interactive Social Policy Simulator (ISPS) at Development Analytics, creating user-friendly interactive microsimulation tools that empower policymakers with actionable insights.

Hazal holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Social Policy from the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at University of Oxford, a second Master’s in Data Science and Society from Tilburg University and a BA in Sociology and International relations from Koc University. She is currently pursuing an external PhD in Data Science at Tilburg University.