Kelly Zhang

Kelly is a Research Scientist with The Agency Fund, with expertise in experiments, behavioral science, and computational social science. She completed her PhD at Stanford, with a focus on African political economy, and has over a decade of experience working in development for research and policy. In her current role, she leads the political economy research initiative and supports organizations in the AI for Global Development Accelerator. As a Research Scientist at MIT GOV/LAB and Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, she led a user research study on a WhatsApp training course for civic organizers in South Africa, launched a Behavioral Science in the Field Course in Kenya, and implemented a vaccine-message testing campaign on social media in Kenya.

Her industry experience includes roles in data science and quantitative social science research. As a data scientist at Crowdpac, she leveraged machine learning models to classify state legislation into different topic areas and worked with the product team in designing A/B testing for email campaigns. As a data scientist at Social Capital, she analyzed log data from companies to deliver on data diligence for the investment team. As a computational social scientist at ACRONYM, she designed, implemented, and analyzed dozens of experiments that directly informed social media advertising campaigns. As a quantitative researcher at Meta, she worked closely with data scientists, engineers, and product managers to evaluate the impact of product features on user behavior from experiments.