Manzer is a Policy Manager in the Scale-ups team at J-PAL South Asia, where he is overseeing and driving the achievement of programmatic policy deliverables for a poverty alleviation program by the Government of Bihar to uplift 0.2 million women from ultra-poverty.
Prior to joining J-PAL, he led the research and development team at ImpactDash, which evaluates social and environmental impact for corporate social responsibility initiatives, government projects, and philanthropic foundations. Before that, he worked as a development consultant with NABARD Consultancy Services, conducting multiple monitoring and evaluation studies for state and central government schemes.
In addition to the above roles, Manzer is the founder of Bridge, a non-profit that aims to provide financial and resource support to learners in higher education from marginalized communities, with the goal of preventing any learner from dropping out of education due to financial or dispositional barriers. To date, Bridge has supported 65 students in their pursuit of higher education. He is also a co-founder of Project EduAccess, a non-profit organization that promotes inclusivity in higher education institutions by offering free mentorship to learners from marginalized communities in South Asia.
As a Chevening scholar, Manzer holds an MSc. in Evidence-based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation from the University of Oxford, as well as a Masters in Social Work (Livelihoods and Social Entrepreneurship) from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
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