Who's who in TALIS

Heewoon Bae
Analyst
Heewoon is a Korean-born, British national, who joined the TALIS team in November 2022 after working as a statistician on Education at a Glance. Before joining the OECD in May 2021, Heewoon trained as a history teacher through the Teach First programme and worked in secondary schools in the West Midlands and Paris. Heewoon holds a Master of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from Oxford University and a Master of Social Policy and Social Innovation from Sciences Po Paris.

Gabor Fülöp
Analyst
A Hungarian national, Gabor has been working at the OECD since 2009. Prior to joining the TALIS team in July 2018, he worked as a statistician at several OECD departments, such as the Statistics Directorate, the Development Centre and the Economics Department, where he mainly worked on macroeconomics, structural policies and related statistics. Gabor holds a Master of International Relations and Economics from the Corvinus University of Budapest and a Master of Economics and Development Economics from the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom).

Emily Groves
Project co-ordinator
An Australian national, Emily joined the Directorate for Education and Skills in 2003 and has worked on a number of different projects since then. She joined the TALIS team in September 2015 as a project assistant, providing administrative support, maintaining the project website and communications tools, and assisting with the preparation of publications. From March 2026, she started as a project co-ordinator, to work more on country engagement and procurement. Before joining the TALIS team, Emily worked on the (now ended) OECD Higher Education Programme (IMHE) for several years. Emily has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Ancient History from the University of Queensland and a Graduate Diploma in Library Science from the Queensland University of Technology.

Rodolfo Ilizaliturri Lopez
Data Scientist
A Mexican national, he joined the TALIS team full time in November 2022 after doing an internship in the same team in May 2022. Before joining the OECD, Rodolfo worked as an analytics consultant in political marketing in Latin America. Rodolfo holds a Master of Data, Economics, and Development Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Qi Kuang
Junior Data Specialist
A Chinese national, Qi joined the TALIS team in March 2026 as a junior data specialist. Prior to that, she already worked in the Directorate for Education and Skills for two and a half years on Education at a Glance, within the Indicators of Education Systems (INES) team, first as an intern and then as a junior data scientist. 

Qi holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Zhejiang University and a master's degree in policy analysis in economics from the Paris School of Economics.

Ruochen Li
TALIS Senior Project Manager
Ruochen joined the OECD in 2016 and has worked on several projects in the area of policy analysis and education survey. Most recently, Ruochen contributed to leading the Above and Beyond: Transitions in Upper Secondary Education project, where he examined issues around general and vocational education pathways, entrance into upper secondary education and how to support students as they move into further education, training and the labour market. Ruochen has also contributed to several country reviews of education policy and the PISA for Schools project, where he focused on stakeholder engagement, and survey instrument and report development.

Prior to joining the OECD, Ruochen worked in education evaluation, project management and teaching. He began his career as a high school teacher, and then worked as a college and career counsellor. Ruochen was born in China and has American nationality. He holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in international education policy analysis from Stanford University.

Leonard Najman
Junior data specialist
A French-British national, Leonard joined the TALIS team at the OECD in November 2025 as a junior data specialist. Prior to this, he worked as a quantitative developer in finance, notably at Rothschild & Co in Paris and Société Générale in New York. Leonard holds a degree in computer science and a master's in quantitative finance from ECE Paris.

Marco Paccagnella
Analyst
An Italian national, Marco joined the OECD in 2014, after five years spent working as an Economist at the Bank of Italy. He has spent most of his time at the OECD working on data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). In 2016-17 he worked as lead analyst in the TALIS Video Study. Since 2021, he is back in the TALIS team, working, among other things, on the Teacher Knowledge Survey module. Marco holds a PhD in Economics from Bocconi University and a MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Nardos Tesfay
Analyst
Nardos is a Canadian national who joined the TALIS team in 2026. She is an education policy researcher with experience contributing to projects on children’s learning and development across diverse contexts and stages of childhood. Prior to joining the OECD, she worked at Stockholm University, where she co-ordinated a longitudinal study examining children’s social and emotional development and family well-being from early childhood through adolescence. Earlier in her career, she worked with UNICEF on programme planning, research and evaluation. Nardos holds a PhD in Education and a Master of Science in Educational Research Methods from the University of Oxford.