Keren Zhu is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D. student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She is also an adjunct lecturer at policy school of the University of Southern California. Her research interests include infrastructure development in emerging markets, program evaluation, the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s engagement with the world, international development, China-African relations and U.S.-China relations. Prior to joining RAND, she was the international affairs manager at Research and Development International, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where she worked on humanitarian and development policy research and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. As a consultant at the International Labor Organization, she managed their public-private partnership project database and evaluated project effectiveness. Zhu holds a M.Sc. in social anthropology from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in English from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.