Dr. Sharifah Abdullah Al-Rajhi has been the acting deputy minister for planning and development at the Ministry of Education since 2022.
She is responsible for developing strategic and operational plans for the ministry, producing its institutional performance, building and managing informational statistical reports, and proposing necessary changes in educational policies based on research.
Prior to her current role, Al-Rajhi served as assistant deputy minister for planning and development and general manager for the education statistics center at the Ministry of Education.
Her main target involved transforming the Ministry of Education to become more data-driven and enhancing the quality of education in alignment with Vision 2030. She designed and managed two major initiatives, involving managing and sharing education data, for a Vision 2030 human capability development program.
Al-Rajhi made several strategic decisions based on accurate and dynamic data across the Kingdom’s education sector. Her achievements include providing national and international organizations with statistics and indicators from the sector and working on multiple projects within the ministry, including capacity and demand management and the educational performance portal, Qarar.
Al-Rajhi also worked at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and Florida State University in the US and served as a member of multiple committees at the Saudi Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economy and Planning and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development.
She was also a part of the executive committee of the UN E-Government Development Index at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
At the General Authority for Statistics, she was a member of the executive and steering committee for Census 2020.
Al-Rajhi received a Ph.D. in data science and two master’s degrees in biostatistics and applied statistics from Florida State University. She was certified in SAS programming and data analysis from the same university in the US.