Lauren Damme
Lauren K. Damme, Ph.D. is an adjunct professor in Public Policy and Public Administration, and teaches PPPA 6016, Public and Non-Profit Program Evaluation and PPPA 6085, AI, Evaluation & Social Science Research. Dr. Damme is an internationally-recognized expert in evaluation, forced labor and human trafficking with over 20 years of experience in 30+ countries leading global research initiatives to advance evidence-building and human rights in government, think tanks, multilaterals and the private sector.
In addition to serving as GWU faculty, Dr. Damme serves in a full-time role as the Director of Innovation in Evaluation & Research at the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL’s) Chief Evaluation Office, where she supports the Department's work on AI evaluation and the use of AI in social science research. She also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Data Foundation, supporting initiatives at the intersection of AI, evaluation and evidence-building, and holds research and advisory appointments at AI evaluation non-profit Humane Intelligence and at the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, where her work focuses on the measurement of forced labor and human trafficking.
In over 14 years of public service, Lauren has previously served as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Director of Research for the Chief Evaluation Office, and Senior Evaluation Research Advisor for the International Bureau’s Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking. In her public service career, she has overseen more than 150 evaluations and prevalence studies supporting $14B in federal programming across 30+ countries focused on labor issues, human rights, and social services. In 2024, Lauren earned the Secretary's Distinguished Career Service Award for her contributions to the Department’s mission. Dr. Damme also led DOL’s international impact evaluation and prevalence survey portfolios in the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking, where she spent years negotiating bilateral agreements for research and piloting surveys in rural areas. Her research portfolio of 40+ studies on social services, workforce and education programs led to national-level policy changes, improving the lives of millions of children and families around the world.
In addition to her federal service, Dr. Damme has led evaluation, labor and human rights research in Geneva, London, New York, Tokyo and D.C. on behalf of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the International Labour Organization, the Freedom Fund, Demos, New America, and the Local Government Information Unit. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Program Evaluation from George Washington University, an M.Sc. in International Development Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a B.Sc. in Business/Survey methods research from Iowa State University, and is the author of several book chapters and articles on applied generative AI use in social science research, and a forthcoming book on the forced labor of migrant domestic workers (Springer International).