Nicole Goldin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. Previously she was global head, inclusive economic growth at Abt Associates, a global research, evaluation, and project consulting firm. Prior to joining Abt, she was founding managing principal and chief economist of NRG Advisory, a boutique practice she launched in 2014 specializing in economic growth, inclusive societies, and youth affairs. She recently worked with UNICEF and the World Bank Education, Jobs, and Social Urban Rural Resilience and GovTech practice groups; and as lead economist and policy advisor to the Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment Coalition (S4YE). In that role, she was lead author of flagship reports Toward Solutions for Youth Employment: Baseline Report (2015) and Toward Employment Solutions for Youth on the Move (2017), and principal architect of the S4YE Impact Portfolio. Since 2013, Goldin has been an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs and was a visiting scholar to the African Leadership University in 2017. In November 2018, she was elected as commissioner to Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2A in Washington, DC, for a two-year term.

Prior to launching NRG Advisory, she was founding director of the Youth Prosperity and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and creator of the inaugural 2014 Global Youth Wellbeing Index. From 2009 to 2012, Goldin served in the Obama administration as senior advisor at the State Department and US Agency for International Development where she received official commendations for her work as co-chair Youth Task Force, in creating the Conflict Minerals Action Plan, in the launch of the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative, and as lead of USAID’s first-ever Youth In Development Policy among other portfolio achievements.

Goldin is a frequent public speaker and commentator: her insights have been featured by CNN, the Economist, the Huffington Post, SSIR, the Guardian, Devex, Diplomatic Courier, Thomson Reuters Trust News, US News, Voice of America, WTOP, and other fora. A supporter of social enterprise, she is on the Board of Educate! and is an advisor to She’s the First. Goldin holds a PhD in economics from School of Oriental and African Studies, an MSc in development studies from London School of Economics, and an MA in international political economy from American University.

Goldin’s career has included policy, strategy, analytical program design and management, and thought leadership in employment and economic growth, finance, trade and emerging markets, education, conflict recovery and stabilization governance and rule of law, social impact, and private sector initiatives. She has been engaged by leading teams and collaborations with organizations such as the United Nations, Hilton, Ford Foundation, Western Union, Clinton Global Initiative, Building Markets (Peace Dividend Trust), Gerson Lehrman Group, International Youth Foundation, Chemonics, FHI360, and Laureate. She has been in seventy-five countries on all seven continents. She is a native New Yorker, avid skier, and supporter of animal rescue.