Ahmed Elsayed is an Associate Professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Executive Director of J-PAL MENA at AUC. In this capacity, he plays a crucial role in J-PAL MENA's operations by providing strategic and technical oversight to research, policy outreach, and capacity-building activities. His role involves guiding the strategic direction and growth of the organization and cultivating partnerships with innovative policymakers across the MENA region to foster evidence generation and usage.

Before joining AUC and J-PAL in 2022, Ahmed spent eight years at IZA and held various positions in the institute including co-coordinating the research activities of the special program area "Gender, Growth, and Labor Markets in Low-Income Countries (G²LM|LIC)".

He holds a PhD in Economics and MSc in Business Research from the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics in the Netherlands. Prior to PhD, Ahmed worked as a Researcher under the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Research Assistantship program.

His main research interests are in development economics, applied micro-econometrics, migration, and labor economics. He is particularly interested in the intersection between research and policy in the area of development economics.