Devyani Ramamoorthy

Devyani Ramamoorthy is a Research Associate at the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley where she will be researching college student success within the education portfolio.

Devyani brings a deep curiosity in understanding how access to education, dignified livelihoods, and the safety net can help people build resilience and wellbeing. Her interest in these topics was sparked while growing up in India, where she saw how inadequate access to housing and quality schools affected children. During her undergraduate years training as an architect to build better infrastructure, she began questioning the socio-economic forces driving spatial disparities. She went on to examine the social networks and urban policies shaping employment and access to water at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and had a front-row seat to see policymaking in action while helping the State of Karnataka develop transit-oriented policy. This experience cemented her love for digging into data and improving access to employment support, income assistance, and education.

As a graduate student, she specialized in applied econometrics and supported independent research examining how drunk driving laws could reduce fatalities and fatal accidents in the US. She also worked with Neighborhood Data for Social Change, where she analyzed large datasets to expand a public repository of socio-economic indicators and contributed to research on housing supply, affordability, and inequality in LA.

Devyani holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Visvesvaraya Technological University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Southern California. In her free time, she paints watercolors, sings in the Carnatic style, and trains to return to the soccer field — her first love.