Shanto serves as an impact evaluation specialist on multiple projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America in a variety of developmental policy interventions. He is an expert in leading randomized control trial and quasi-experimental design-based research for making causal inference. He currently leads NORC’s financial inclusion related evaluations in developing countries and an evaluation of a USAID-funded food security program in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Shanto is a subject matter expert in child labor and forced labor measurement. Over the last 15 years he has led multiple evauations across 20 countries. From 2022–2024 he served as the principal investigator in two forced labor studies funded by the United States Department of Labor (USDOL), providing technical expertise in documenting the prevalence of forced labor in the garment sector in Argentina and Madagascar. Shanto has been regularly invited to present in high-level conferences and workshops on child labor and forced labor and appeared in media representing the International Programs department.

During 2015–2023, Shanto led two impact evaluations of International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Global Agricultural and Food Security Program Private Sector Window investment in agricultural value chain in Rwanda and Malawi.

Before joining NORC, Shanto worked in two premier research institutions in India. From 2010 to 2013, he was the head of policy and in-house research team at the Centre for Micro Finance at IFMR Lead, one of the leading institutions in South Asia for undertaking experimental research on poverty. Later, from 2013 to 2014, Shanto worked at IFMR Finance Foundation, a research and advocacy institution known for applied research on financial services and its influential policy advocacy role in expanding financial services to financially excluded populations in India. Shanto also served as a short-term consultant at the World Bank.