Nazli Aktakke is a social policy researcher with 12 years of research experience working on various policy topics ranging from poverty and cash transfer programs to health and education outcomes of children. In the last 10 years, she worked as part of several project teams in Development Analytics with responsibilities related to designing methodologies and instruments for measuring project or policy outcomes, conducting policy and program evaluations as well as a trainer in capacity building trainings on research methods and impact evaluations for local CSOs and state agencies.

In her extensive career, Nazli has been at the forefront of quantitative analysis, acting as the primary quantitative expert or overseeing quantitative experts in various projects across diverse country contexts. Her impactful contributions span locations such as Myanmar, Türkiye, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Pakistan, Senegal, Madagascar, Mali, and Tanzania, working with esteemed clients including UNICEF, WFP, the World Bank, and the European Commission. Notably, she has played an analytical role in large-scale evaluations, providing quantitative expertise and conducting micro-level household data analysis on critical issues, ranging from food security to access to education and health services.

Nazli's specialized expertise extends to ex-ante and ex-post evaluations of cash transfer programs. Since the inception of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Türkiye in 2016, she has been an integral part of various evaluations and research studies related to the program, initially for WFP and subsequently for IFRC. Her most recent engagement with IFRC as a Senior Quantitative Researcher involved co-designing methodologies, supervising analysts, and contributing significantly to the preparation of final deliverables.

Amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Nazli has played a significant role as a quantitative expert in projects for three different UNICEF country offices (Türkiye, St. Lucia, and Georgia). Her focus has been on estimating the impact of COVID-19 on poverty and child poverty, utilizing household budget surveys, and constructing microsimulation models to assess the poverty alleviation effect and the cost-effectiveness of alternative cash transfer programs targeting diverse sub-groups in the population. Notably, she recently served as the senior quantitative expert in a study for UNICEF Türkiye, building a microsimulation model to estimate the poverty impact of the February 2023 earthquakes and the poverty-alleviating impact of cash transfers.

She holds two consecutive master's degrees in Economics from the Bogazici University of Türkiye and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid of Spain and a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from METU of Türkiye.