Chief Economist and Lead Analyst - Business Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions

Continuing Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy

Vanna is Chief Economist and Lead Analyst in Business Strategy at the Department for Work and Pensions. She leads a multi-disciplinary team of analysts and is responsible for developing the evidence and analysis underpinning the departmental vision 2025 and supporting the Executive Team in its Strategic Design Authority role.
Vanna is an economist with over 20 years' experience in leading multidisciplinary teams and managing complex portfolios of analytical work covering a wide range of economic and policy areas.

Until June 2021 she was Chief Economist and Head of Analytics at the Food Standards Agency. She led on improving the overall analytical capability of the department by focussing on innovation and evidence development, including the use of new techniques and approaches (including data science, behavioural science, and decision science) and in engaging with academics and external experts to build high quality evidence into the policy making process.

Vanna also worked for eight years at the Home Office, mostly on immigration policy and labour and skill shortage as Head of Economics and Research for the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). She built an international reputation for the MAC, engaging with senior officials in several countries and international organisations (including World Bank, OECD, IOM).

She started her career in the civil service as an economist at the Office for National Statistics leading on development work to improve the measurements of GDP in real prices, outputs of public services and UK productivity.