Phomdaen Souvanna

Phomdaen Souvanna is a senior researcher at AIR. She has over 10 years of experience conducting research and evaluations of social programs using experimental, non-experimental, and descriptive methods. Dr. Souvanna has content expertise in workforce development policies and programs, including career pathways, reemployment services, and job training for low-income adults and youth.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Souvanna was at Abt Associates where she worked on large multi-year impact, outcomes, and implementation evaluations of local, state, and federal workforce programs. As part of this work, she led qualitative field-based data collection for implementation studies of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Reemploy Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program and Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant. She contributed to the design, data collection, and analysis of a small-scale randomized control trial study of Year Up’s Professional Training Corps program. Dr. Souvanna also oversaw the systematic evidence review team for DOL’s Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research (CLEAR). Additionally, she provided evaluation technical assistance to state RESEA program administrators and third-party evaluators of Workforce Innovation Fund grantees.