Professionally:
I received my PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in May
2011. I spent a year in Kenya working under professors Michael
Kremer and Clair Null as a postdoctoral researcher for Emory
University on a large randomized controlled trial run by
Innovations for Poverty Action in western Kenya (the WASH Benefits project.)
Then I spent two years as a post-doc/visiting prof at Swarthmore
College, teaching, writing up work from Kenya, and starting a
project on food stamps (ongoing). Presently I am working as a
project scientist for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency
in the Social Sciences (BITSS).
I am broadly interested in issues related to causal
inference in applied micro-econometrics, research design and
program evaluation, with a focus on applications in labor
economics and development economics, and child health interventions
more specifically. The lead
chapter of my dissertation was on the effect of war deaths of US
soldiers on local military recruiting. I enjoy teaching a great
deal--labor economics or development economics with an applied
econometric angle, or just plain stats and
econometrics are my favorite to teach.
Personally:
I love to run and hike long distances. And by "long," I
mean that walking from border to border across the country isn't
that long a hike, and 100 miles isn't that long a run.
I grew up in Reston, Virginia where I attained the Boy Scouts of
America rank of Eagle Scout and attended Thomas Jefferson High
School for Science and Technology. Then I
volunteered in Seoul, South Korea for two years. In
college I majored in economics and graduated as department
valedictorian, with University Honors and magna cum laude. Since 2002
I have hiked the entire Appalachian Trail (2168 miles from
Georgia to Maine), the entire Pacific Crest Trail (2658 miles
from Mexico to Canada), and become only the second (and fastest)
person ever to hike the Continental Divide Trail round-trip
2,800 miles each way from Mexico to Canada and back in a single
year. There's a Backpacker magazine
article about the hike. I have also run numerous marathons and
ultra-marathons. My 26.2 mile marathon personal best is
3:00:23, my 50-mile best is 9:05 and my 100-mile best is 25:35.
I like Radiohead, Kurt Vonnegut, and
films by Ingmar Bergman.
