Welcome! I use this site as a portfolio to consolidate and share my published and in-progress research, along with other reports and publications. Below is a summary of my professional background and academic research, and in the menu above you can navigate to the “Research & CV” page, which provides links to published works (it’s best viewed on desktop).

I am an environment and development economist by training, with over ten years of experience in Africa’s Great Lakes region and in the Middle East and North Africa. My work primarily applies geographic data science and spatial econometrics techniques to assess socioeconomic issues like poverty, inequality, and vulnerability, and their environmental linkages, particularly around protected areas, biodiversity hotspots, and tropical forests. I also have expertise in computation of development indices such as Multidimensional Poverty, Human Development, Human Security, and Multidimensional Vulnerability Indices. In 2021 and 2022, I served as an expert facilitator for the United Nations Development Programme’s Massive Open Online Course on Developing a Multidimensional Poverty Index.

I completed my doctoral dissertation research in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment in 2024, which applied behavioral economics theory to understand livelihood risks and resilience in communities near Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, which is situated within the transboundary Greater Virunga Landscape of Rwanda, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of Congo. In affiliation with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the world’s longest-running mountain gorilla research site, my dissertation explored how community members bordering endangered mountain gorilla habitat in Volcanoes National Park evaluate their own resilience, and how they navigate risk in their livelihoods decision-making. The research was transdisciplinary, in that it was co-designed with communities and local organizations, to center community members’ perspectives, agency, and well-being in an effort to inform community-driven conservation planning and policymaking.

My doctoral research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences program and a NASA Space Grant Consortium Graduate Research Fellowship. I was also an NSF NRT Fellow for 2023-2024 in the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Traineeship in Regenerative Landscape Science (LandscapeU, 2021-2022 Cohort). Additionally, alongside my doctoral research, I was awarded a grant as Co-Principal Investigator for 2021-2022 on a project with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Forestry Division using spatial economic analysis to identify areas in Central Africa at high risk of deforestation and forest degradation based on socioeconomic and economic drivers.

Previously, I advised United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Yemen as a Senior Economist (IC) on design and implementation of socioeconomic surveys, in addition to advising on innovative methods in monitoring and evaluation for the Country Office’s flagship resilient livelihoods project with a USD $24M joint interagency portfolio. Prior to advising UNDP Yemen, I served as Data Analytics Specialist at UNDP Uganda, in the Strategic Policy Advisory Unit, and further conducted analyses for the Horn of Africa and Sahel subregions for UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa. I have held consultancies as a statistician and/or impact evaluation advisor with (in no particular order) FAO Forestry Division, UNDP Rwanda, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, MASS Design, Legado Initiative, World Wildlife Fund in Greater Mekong (Vietnam, Myanmar, and Thailand), and MASS Design, and was a research and advocacy grant fellow at the Coalition for Human Rights in Development. I have held research affiliations with University of Rwanda’s Centre for GIS, International Gorilla Conservation Programme, Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and contributed to two National Geographic Society-funded studies in Rwanda. I was a Princeton in Africa Fellow 2015-16 in Rwanda.

I hold a PhD in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment (now the Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Societies program) from Pennsylvania State University (Alumni Association Dissertation Award, NRT Fellow, NASA PSGC Fellow, NSF DDRIG), MSc from the London School of Economics (with Distinction, Best Overall Performance Prize, Best Dissertation Prize, James B. Reynolds Scholar), and a BA from Dartmouth College (High Honors, magna cum laude, Downey Family Prize in Environmental Studies for research conducted in Morocco). I was born and raised in Utah. Formerly an NCAA Division I alpine ski racer, I now spend time trail running, XC mountain bike racing, and doing CrossFit (CrossFit L1 Trainer Certification; former coach at CrossFit Kampala and KigaliFit).

For programming and data management and analysis, I primarily use:

R (RStudio, Shiny), Python, Javascript (Google Earth Engine), SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite)

Stata, ArcGIS (Pro, Online incl. Web Apps and StoryMaps, Desktop), QGIS, GeoDa, Nvivo, SPSS, Minitab, PowerBI, Excel, Tableau

HTML/CSS markup, LaTex