Rohan Sandhu is the founding director of the Reimagining the Economy initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research and practice focus on industrial strategies, place‑based economic development, services‑led growth, and institutional capacity, with a particular emphasis on how these shape good jobs and long-term prosperity. He leads an interdisciplinary team that works on economic transformation strategies both in the US and around the world.
His primary interest is in unpacking how ideas move from research to federal and state programs and ultimately into local government and non-government institutions, and what kinds of capacity and coordination are needed for those ideas to eventually translate into economic outcomes. In line with that, he has spearheaded Reimagining the Economy's efforts to close the feedback loops between research and practice, by leading applied research projects around federal programming, green industrial policies, and workforce development strategies. He also also designs and leads communities of practice with economic development practitioners, research translation initiatives like the Economy in Place data platform, and the initiative's student engagement.
Rohan has spent the past fifteen years working as a researcher and practitioner in economic development, education, and state capacity. Previously, he co-led the India operations of the International Innovation Corps, where he raised and managed multimillion-dollar portfolios and led teams working with governments and social enterprises on large-scale initiatives in education, climate adaptation, and digital governance. He was also part of the founding team of the Brookings Institution’s India Center. His professional experiences include roles at the City of Chicago, the Department of ICT, Innovation, and Youth Affairs in Kenya, and as Chief of Staff to the Chief Opposition Whip in the Indian Parliament.
Rohan’s research and commentary on economic growth, regional inequality, and state capacity have appeared in Time, Project Syndicate, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and ProMarket. He is co‑editor and lead author of Accelerating Access to Quality Education (Brookings, 2015), and he frequently engages with practitioners and policymakers through workshops and panels. He has a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA (with honors) in Economics and Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Selected Publications
Book
- “Accelerating Access to Quality Education” (with Subir Gokarn), Brookings: 2015 (Edited volume)
Articles, Papers, and Book Chapters
- "Redrawing the Map of American Prosperity" (with Joseph Parilla), Project Syndicate, February 2026
- "The Global Economic Transformation will be Local" (with Gordon Hanson and Dani Rodrik), Project Syndicate, January 2026
- "An Abundance of Capacity" Stanford Social Innovation Review, August 2025
- "The U.S. Place-Based Policy Supply Chain" (with Gordon Hanson and Dani Rodrik), in The Economics of Place-Based Policies, University of Chicago Press
- “Industrial policy for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises” (with Dani Rodrik), VoxDev, August 2, 2024
- “Servicing Development: Productive Upgrading of Labor-Absorbing Services in Developing Economies” (with Dani Rodrik), NBER Working Paper 32738, July 2024
- “The Way Forward for Services-Led Economic Development” (with Dani Rodrik), Project Syndicate, June 10, 2024
- “Industrial Policy is a Verb” (with Kartik Akileswaran), ProMarket, Chicago Booth Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, April 4, 2024
- “Bottom Up Bidenomics,” Time, October 16, 2024
- “Funding Digital Government Initiatives” (with David Eaves, Emily Middleton, and Claire Bedoui), Harvard Ash Center, February 4, 2021
- “The pandemic has yielded more than a learning crisis,” Mint, August 27, 2021
- “Putting the Social in a Social Stock Exchange,” The Business Line, July 12, 2020
- “Towards a New Education Paradigm,” The Business Line, February 5, 2020
- “Stairway to Prosperity” (with Subir Gokarn), The Indian Express, September 22, 2017
- “Breaking Down the Barriers,” in Meaningful Education in Times of Uncertainty: Collection of Essays, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution, August 2017
Conferences
- Economic Innovation Group Power of Place Summit (October 2025)
- Integrating Workforce and Economic Development
- Place-Based Policies for Economic Revitalization, Harvard Kennedy School (April 2025)
- Workforce Strategies in Place, National Economic Resilience Forum, Argonne National Laboratory (April 2024)
- Human Centered Data, Census Open Innovation Summit (January 2024) https://opportunity.census.gov/assets/files/2023-DOC.pdf
- Federal Grants, Economic Distress, and Local Capacity (October 2023) https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/wiener/programs/economy/events/federal-grants-economic-distress-and-local-capacity
- Shaping our collective digital future: why digital government matters now, Rockefeller Bellagio Center (June 2022) https://public.digital/pd-insights/blog/2022/10/shaping-our-collective-digital-future-convening-why-digital-government-matters-now
- Funding digital government initiatives, Harvard Ash Center (December 2020)