Maria Jose Guevara

Maria Jose Guevara is a senior analyst at RAND Europe in the Education, Employment and Skills team. She has over a decade of experience leading education research, monitoring and evaluation, and international development programmes across Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

Before joining RAND Europe, she was a research manager at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in the UK, where she managed multi-country partnerships and evaluations with organisations including UNESCO, Oxfam, and Right to Play. Her work focused on programme design and delivery, policy engagement, and strengthening MEL frameworks for donor-funded projects.

Previously, she worked at Ecuador’s National Evaluation Institute (INEVAL), starting as a researcher on comparative education policy and later serving as Director of Research. In that role, she led the country’s participation in international large-scale assessments such as PISA-D, PIAAC, and ERCE, managing teams and coordinating with the OECD, UNESCO, the IADB, and national partners. She also served as OECD’s Lead Analyst for Ecuador during the PISA-D initiative.

Her consultancy experience includes work with UNESCO on teacher policy in Africa and on school-related gender-based violence in Latin America, and with VVOB on TVET development in the Andean region. She also collaborated with Fundación de las Américas (FUDELA) in Ecuador to design and support community programmes for displaced populations and refugees, and to advise on the integration of children into the national school system.

She received her M.Sc. in gender and development from the London School of Economics and has published on education assessment, equity, and learning outcomes.