I am an economist, social sector leader, international development professional and humanitarian emergency responder. For more than two decades, I have been identifying and implementing impactful programming with marginalized communities and local governments across more than 30 low- and middle-income countries as well as in the US. I have been fortunate to repeatedly launch, rapidly build, and strategically lead several different highly collaborative, diverse, and dynamic organizations. I focus on designing and writing causally-identified, policy-relevant research and then crafting and implementing evidence-based policy.

Today, I am at the University of Chicago serving as Executive Director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics fostering frontier research and converting findings into global impact. Immediately prior, I launched and served as the founding Executive Director for UChicago’s Development Economics Center and Development Innovation Lab (DIL) with Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer working to use the tools of economics to develop innovations with the potential to benefit millions of people – especially in low- and middle-income countries. During that time, I oversaw the Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics and the Innovation Commission on Climate Change, Food Security, and Agriculture. I also launched the Market Shaping Accelerator to advise governments and major philanthropies on unleashing the creative power of the private sector to address social challenges, and the Government Innovation Initiative to support our government partners in establishing within their offices the virtuous cycle of evidence informing policy and then policy generating ever-more-relevant evidence. 

I came to UChicago from the University of California, Berkeley where I did my Ph.D. studying development economics and political economy with a particular interest in institutional formation in weak states and ungoverned spaces. In my research, I combine my networks and years of experience with my broad educational background, knowledge of theory and training as a microeconomist to conceive of, design, fund and implement novel randomized controlled trials (RCTs).  I similarly identify, access and employ relevant administrative data sets both in service of RCTs and to exploit quasi-random policy variations for causal identification.  I work primarily in collaboration with and in support of local government and civil society partners, and I strive to conduct experiments at-scale while minimizing deviations from normal operations.

Before returning to academia, I was in Haiti for five years leading Sean Penn’s J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO, renamed CORE) first as Country Director and later as Mr. Penn’s Chief of Staff and Senior Vice President. During that time, I built the organization from a volunteer team of a few dozen, mostly international, volunteers, to one of the largest and most successful development institutions in the country employing nearly 1,500 and led by Haitian development professionals. Prior to that, I was with Catholic Relief Services in Ethiopia, Uganda Village Project, and a series of posts throughout Latin America. I also am a founding board member and continue to serve LIDE Haiti Foundation.

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I'm originally from Nebraska in the United States and began my professional career by spending several years in formation with the Jesuits. In addition to English, I also work in Haitian Kreyol, French, and Spanish. Prior to my Ph.D., I earned a BA in Philosophy and Spanish from Xavier University, an MA from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and an MSc in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley.