Raafi-Karim Alidina

Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Raafi attended Harvard University for his undergraduate degree, finishing in 2012. After completing, he stayed in Cambridge for a year as a Research Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Raafi did his research with Dr. Hannah Riley Bowles on implicit gender bias, specifically in negotiations and in organizations more broadly.

After that, he was awarded an International Development and Management fellowship that sent him to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he worked with the Aga Khan Foundation-Bangladesh (an NGO that runs pre-schools in garment factories, tea plantations, and urban slums) helping them improve their gender equality practices. He then returned to the US and to academia as part of the Mass Movements Project with Dr. Stephen Kosack.

He then moved back to Cambridge, MA to attend the Harvard Kennedy School where he completed a Masters in Public Policy in 2017. His research on using behavioural economics for inclusion in organisations and the development of a behavioural measure for inclusion was awarded the Jane Mansbridge Research Award for outstanding research on women and gender, and the Susan C Eaton Memorial Prize for the top HKS Masters Thesis in Social Policy.

Raafi is the co-author (with Stephen Frost) of the book Building an Inclusive Organisation: Leveraging the Power of a Diverse Workforce (KoganPage, 2019).

Raafi is also a die-hard ice hockey fan, and loves cooking, baking, playing music, and woodworking.