Sudhindra Sharma has been with and guided IDA since its inception in 1996. He has over twenty years of experience working in research and development in Nepal, India, Finland, and Thailand. Sharma has led over twenty nationwide surveys in Nepal, covering areas of community development, economics, finance and investment, governance, peace and conflict, politics, and political economy. 

Sharma is the author of Procuring Water: Foreign Aid and Rural Water Supply in Nepal (2001) and a co-editor of Aid Under Stress: Water, Forests and Finnish Support in Nepal. In 2009, Sharma was awarded a Docent in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki and has since begun supervising Ph.D. candidates enrolled in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Tampere, Finland.