Yamini Aiyar is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and the Watson Institute, Brown University. She served as President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi, from 2017 to 2024, where she spearheaded the establishment of new research initiatives on State Capacity and Politics. Prior to becoming President, she founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR, known for its work on governance, social accountability, and expenditure tracking in social policy. Her work sits at the intersection of research and policy practice, with research interests spanning contemporary politics, state capacity, welfare policy, federalism, and India’s political economy.

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Yamini serves on several boards and advisory committees, including the Advisory Committee at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration; the Council of the United Nations University; the Chief Minister’s Rajasthan Economic Transformation Advisory Council (2022–2023); the Expert Group on Medium-Long Term Post-COVID Strategy for the Government of Punjab (2021–22); the Delhi Board of School Education; and the Advisory Board of the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies at IIT Mumbai.

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She has published widely in academic and public forums including The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Indian Express, and The Hindu, and writes regular columns for Hindustan Times and Deccan Herald. Her forthcoming book, Lessons in State Capacity from Delhi Schools, will be published by Oxford University Press in October 2024.