Lakshmi Karan

As Director of Impact Assessment, Learning and Utilization, Lakshmi Karan is responsible for leading the initiatives to assess investment performance and effectiveness. Her responsibilities include managing systems and processes that track metrics, measure progress and extract learning to inform decision-making, with emphasis on the Skoll Awards program. Lakshmi also manages a variety of grant relationships as a member of the Program and Impact team.

Prior to working at Skoll, Lakshmi was a consultant to Fortune 500 companies. She helped them determine and prioritize projects to enhance their competitive advantage and specialized in systems design and knowledge management. In 1999 she decided to dedicate herself to social betterment. She interned with the Asia Foundation and worked as a consultant to Earthwatch Institute, Oxfam America and the Reebok Human Rights Program, specializing in economic development and human rights. She also served as Program Manager for the Alchemy Foundation.

Lakshmi grew up in South India and came to the United States in 1993. She completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Madras and a master's degree in Systems Management from the National Institute of Information Technology, both of which are located in Madras, India. She earned her masters and Ph.D. in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her doctoral dissertation was in the fields of nonprofit effectiveness and organizational learning. She is fluent in Tamil and Hindi and intermediate in French.