Ashweeta Patnaik is a Principal Associate at MEF Associates. With over 17 years of experience, she is deeply committed to translating research and data analytics into actionable insights that help programs create pathways out of poverty. Ashweeta’s expertise in program evaluation, policy research, and data analytics spans a wide policy portfolio, including workforce development, post-secondary access and completion, financial empowerment, and economic mobility. Ashweeta is an expert in quantitative research methods, data analytics, data visualizations, and administrative data linkage. She has successfully provided monitoring and evaluation technical assistance, managed projects, designed data collection plans, designed longitudinal databases, and effectively communicated data insights to diverse audiences.
At MEF, Ashweeta works on projects related to economic mobility, financial empowerment, and family strengthening. She is a Task Lead for the Evaluation of the Tennessee Opportunity Pilot Initiative, where she leads the impact evaluations and data collection for seven pilots implementing randomized controlled trials. As a subcontractor to Abt Associates, Ms. Patnaik leads MEF’s work as Project Director in maintaining and developing the Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research (CLEAR) for the U.S. Department of Labor. Before joining MEF in 2022, Ashweeta was a Research Associate at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas at Austin. There, she designed and conducted rigorous program evaluations that leveraged administrative data and supported the continuous improvement efforts of local and state human service programs and interventions.
Ashweeta holds an MPH from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She is certified by the Institute of Education Sciences in the What Work Clearinghouse Group Design Standards (Version 5.0) and Single-Case Design Standards (Version 5.0) and by the Coleridge Initiative in Applied Data Analytics. In her free time, Ashweeta enjoys reading books, eating out, and traveling.