Amy Jo Dowd

Dr. Amy Jo Dowd is the Senior Director for Education Research in Save the Children’s Department of Education and Child Protection. A graduate of Stanford (MA) and Harvard’s (MEd, EdD) Graduate Schools of Education, she is passionate about using rigorous research to improve practice in international education and development.

She oversees a team of 10 applied researchers supporting evidence-based program teams across the globe to ensure all children learn essential literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional skills in early childhood and early grades. She led the development and field testing of Literacy Boost™, Save the Children’s innovative program combination of assessment, teacher training, and community reading action. An evidence-driven system for improving children’s learning now implemented in more than 30 sites across the globe, Literacy Boost has transformed the way that Save the Children supports children to reach their potential. It has spawned additional evidence-based systems for intervention such as Numeracy Boost, and Emergent Literacy, Math (ELM), and refocused capacity strengthening for monitoring and evaluation teams in each country upon interpreting evidence for program improvement.

Through these programs and SUPER (Save-University Partnership for Education Research), a program that brings university-based researchers together with field staff to collaborate on research projects of mutual interest, she has over a decade encouraged a culture of inquiry and continuous improvement at Save the Children.