MPA/ID student

Tarun Cherukuri

MPA/ID student image

I came to the MPA/ID Program to grow as a development economics practitioner with a deep drive for socioeconomic progress and accountability to people and with a positive, persuasive, and innovative approach.

The MPA/ID Program challenges you every session and every day. It has been pushing me to wonder about theory and practice of policy and development. It has slowly been reshaping my understanding and ideas of micro-economic behavior, macroeconomic trends, the institutions and forces which shape them all. But more importantly, it has put me together with the brightest minds and warmest hearts from around the world, brought together by their intense drive to ask what they can meaningfully do for the world around them. Being with them is constantly pushing me to be the best I can, intellectually and spiritually.

Trained as a chemical engineer, Tarun worked for Unilever before joining Teach for India as a classroom teacher whose mission was to bridge the achievement gap of students from low income communities in Pune, India. Once in graduate school, he spent his summer internship with J-PAL South Asia working on APREst School Choice in Hyderabad, India, researching and testing alternative measurement tools to capture learning and development of rural children who were offered school vouchers across 180 villages in the State.