Sarah Cattan
www.nesta.org.uk/team/sarah-cattan/
www.nesta.org.uk/team/sarah-cattan/
Mission director, fairer start mission
Sarah leads Nesta's a fairer start mission.
Sarah is an economist with over a decade of experience conducting policy-relevant research on early childhood development and policy.
Before joining Nesta, Sarah worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) for 11 years, where she led their work on education and skills. Sarah has conducted influential work on key national early years policies in the UK, including Sure Start, the free entitlement to childcare and the Family Nurse Partnership. She has also worked closely with a number of local authorities and children's charities to adapt and experimentally evaluate interventions aimed at improving the outcomes of disadvantaged children and young people. During Covid-19, Sarah also led a major study looking at the impact of the pandemic on children's learning and wellbeing.
Sarah has written widely about inequalities in children's outcomes and published research in top scientific journals. While at the IFS, Sarah also worked as a teaching fellow at University College London. She has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
