Sara Hernández-Saborit
Dr. Sara Hernández-Saborit is an associate principal in the Labor & Employment Practice at Charles River Associates. She brings expertise in labor economics, applied microeconomics analysis, and program and impact evaluations.
She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she specialized in labor economics and development economics.
Dr. Hernández-Saborit has extensive experience in program and randomized impact evaluations through randomized control trials for government agencies and non-profit organizations. Her work spans the full cycle, from designing, piloting, and validating data collection instruments (paper, digital, and online surveys); training and supervising enumerators during field implementation; developing monitoring tools for implementation; and the application of rigorous protocols for data quality assurance, processing, and advanced econometric analysis. Her projects consistently aim to generate evidence that informs the design, adaptation, and effective implementation of programs.
Her list of works includes the impact evaluation of public workforce development programs for jobseekers (with a focus on employment and earnings outcomes), initiatives to improve teacher training, capacity-building programs for school principals, and interventions to influence undergraduate students’ choice of major, among others. In addition, her research has examined the interaction between international trade and living standards, including dimensions such as violence, education, and fertility. She has collaborated on projects in the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Kenya, and India.
Dr. Hernández-Saborit is a member of the American Economic Association (AEA) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA), an Invited Researcher with the J-PAL North America and J-PAL Europe network, and a Research Affiliate at the Forward Society Lab (FOS) at the University of Toronto. Her research has been supported by grants from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL North America), the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Buffett Institute at Northwestern University, among others.
Prior to joining CRA, Dr. Hernández-Saborit was an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Economics Department at Northwestern University, where she taught Microeconomics, Labor Economics, and Economics of Gender, and was elected to the Faculty Honor Roll multiple times.