MEET OUR MENTEES

Click on the names below to read about RIC’s Mentee Cohort in the 2020-2021 Year!
*Each mentee who successfully completes the RIC mentorship program is awarded a 1000 USD scholarship to use for costs incidental to the PhD application process.

Aja Kennedy
Diplomat,
U.S. Department of State Foreign Service

Anaïs Toungui
Research Associate
American Institutes for Research

Ashmit Vyas
Undergraduate
University of Pennsylvania

Audrey Kudzai Mutanhaurwa
Undergraduate
St. Catherine University

PAST Research in color mentee Cohorts:

2019-2020 MENTEE COHORT

Aja Kennedy is currently a diplomat in the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service, where she has worked since July 2017. Aja currently serves as a consular officer in the U.S. Embassy at Bogota, Colombia. She previously served two years in Hermosillo, Mexico and spent time covering the Bolivian Affairs desk for the Department in Washington, D.C. Aja is a Peace Corps alumna, having served in the Darien province of Panama between 2013-2015. She has a Master's degree in International Development from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton and a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish and Global Studies from UNC Chapel Hill. Aja hopes to pivot from her diplomacy work into a career in research and pursue a Ph.D. in applied microeconomics or public policy. Her primary research interests lie in investigating issues of inequity in the United States and in Latin America, with a focus on evaluating the distributional impacts of public policy in a way that takes into account the fact that marginal wealth, benefits or income has higher utility for those at lower levels of income or wealth. She also hopes to participate in research that evaluates the historical distributional impacts of policies that have disenfranchised Black Americans. Aja was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Anaïs Toungui is a quantitative research associate at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) where she uses empirical methods to support the research and evaluation of projects on early childhood education/development, cash transfers/social protection, students’ reading and learning assessments, and on crime and justice. Prior to AIR, she gained analytical and research experiences through her roles at Innovations for Poverty Action, UNHCR – Jordan, UNDP – Gabon, The Hunger Project and The African Union. Her research interest focuses on child poverty and social welfare in sub-Saharan Africa through the lenses of health and education. She is particularly keen on exploring the causal mechanisms by which children’s vulnerability can be reduced through early childhood development and education, infant and young child feeding practices, and through improved maternal health and nutrition. Anaïs holds a Master of International Affairs in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as well as a BA in International Studies with a minor in Political Economy from Marymount Manhattan College. She is a native French speaker, and was born and raised in Libreville, Gabon.

Ashmit Vyas is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He developed a keen interest in the social sciences through his experiences as a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, a Student Fellow at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, and an active member of the Penn Climate Econometrics Group. Ashmit’s dream of becoming an economist stems from a desire to work in a career that will allow him to explore his intellectual curiosity while also contributing meaningfully to the local and global community. Having lived in four different countries, Ashmit is particularly passionate about international development and the intersection of economics and public policy. He has previously written in the Wall Street Journal, delivered a TEDx talk about behavioral science, and won the 2020 COVID-19 Policy Hackathon hosted by Stanford University and MIT. This summer, he will further explore his interests by working on the Economics team at KPMG in his hometown of Brisbane, Australia. Ashmit is also an avid debater and soccer player, and currently serves as a captain on the club soccer team at the University of Pennsylvania.

Audrey Kudzai Mutanhaurwa is a third-year international undergraduate student at St. Catherine University majoring in economics with a minor in statistics and finance. Her research interests include international economics and finance, development economics, and public finance. She is passionate about using economics to improve the fiscal, economic, and social conditions in developing countries, especially in southern Africa. At St. Catherine University, she works as a student assistant in the office of institutional advancement, and works as a statistics tutor for the economics department. Additionally, she is a research assistant for the economics department where she helps analyze literature on economic participation in Jordan, and program surveys for UNICEF youth with a focus on economic engagement using OpenData Kit, Excel, and Stata. She currently participates in several leadership roles on campus including being the student chair of the Student Senate, a mentor for the university’s peer mentorship program, a peace prayer coordinator for St. Catherine’s International Student Organization (SCISO), and a mentor for the MCDE (Minnesota Center for Diversity in Economics). Audrey was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

Dafne Murillo López is a research assistant at Columbia University’s economics department through the Bridge to the PhD program. Born and raised in Lima, Peru, she is interested in questions of race and inequality, particularly in her home region of Latin America. She is currently, among other projects, helping to develop two country-wide RCT experiments in an effort to improve anti-corruption bottom-up mechanisms in Peru. She graduated from Columbia with a double major in Economics and Latin American Studies. Through the economics honors thesis program, she evaluated the heterogeneous effects of labor legislation on citizen and immigrant domestic workers’ wages. Investigating the short-term effects of policy on this particularly marginalized population reaffirmed her commitment to pursue a Ph.D. Both Dafne’s lived and academic experiences fuel her interest in conducting research in the fields of labor, development, political economy, and economic history. The first prong of her research agenda seeks to understand how policy can help underserved groups, while the second seeks to understand why such disparities exist in the first place. Dafne hopes to continue exploring these questions through pursuing a path in academia.

Daisy Lu is currently a research assistant at Tufts University. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. After graduating, she worked as a data scientist at Nielsen, where she completed a two-year, technical leadership development program focusing on consumer measurement. Daisy then transitioned to a role at a small real estate investment trust working on their data analytics team to advance new business initiatives. Daisy’s research interests are in the intersection of technology, health inequality, and public policy. Her interest in academic research comes from her motivation to leverage her industry experience in data science to address societal inequities and work toward creating a more just future.

Darien Kearney is a master’s student in applied psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). Before USC, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in business administration, each time specializing in finance. His decision to become more involved in finance and economics comes from his experience as an investment analyst with D. Hilton Associates, where he modeled executive retirement scenarios. During his two years with the company, he watched how the impact of economic downturns contributed to client mood fluctuations. COVID-19 presented yet another opportunity to observe intense discussions around portfolio restructuring due to client uncertainty. At present, his work at Immersion Neuroscience allows him to study how people make decisions unconsciously. While Immersion uses this thought-leadership to help market researchers, managers, and executives predict consumer behavior, he believes this technology can help predict investor behavior. During his academic career, he has been the recipient of several awards including the King Solomon Accounting Scholarship, the Risk Management Association’s Scholarship, the Ph.D. Project Stipend Award, the Southern Management Pre-Doctoral Consortium Stipend Award, and now the Research in Color Foundation Scholarship. Darien’s current research interests are in the field of Behavioral Economics, Behavioral Finance, and Neuroeconomics. He hopes to study how investor behavior impacts market runs and market crashes. To do this, he would like to analyze the influence of economic variables on investor emotion and investor personality

Diego Martin is a PhD student in economics at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, he was an Empirical Studies of Conflict Research Specialist in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University where he provided advanced statistical analysis and qualitative analysis, under the direction of Professor Jake Shapiro. He holds a Master’s degree from Universidad del Rosario in economics. Before working at Princeton, Diego provided research assistance at the Development Bank of Latin American – CAF. His previous professional experience includes two years at Universidad del Rosario.

Enrique Pyfrom Jr. is a third-year undergraduate pursuing a dual B.A. in economics and mathematics at Morehouse College. At Morehouse, he is a Presidential Fellow and has been named a top ranking scholar in his department. Last summer, Enrique interned at the Central Bank of the Bahamas where he focused on the agricultural industry’s impact on the distribution of income based on geographical location. He also works part-time as a field researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Being a Black, first-generation college student from a developing country, Enrique is very passionate about inequality, and research that involves looking at how environmental, health, education, and development economic policy affects people of color and other marginalized communities. Enrique was born and raised in Nassau, the Bahamas.

Gabriel Butler is a 2009 graduate of University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his B.A. in business economics with a minor in Japanese. In 2007-08 he studied abroad in Tokyo, Japan at International Christian University on a merit scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education. After graduating from UCLA, Gabriel moved to mainland China where he taught ESL for six years while studying Chinese in his free time before transitioning into an international high school program overseen by UCLA. Here he taught World History and served as a teaching aide for Economics courses. In summer 2020 Gabriel was a fellow in the American Economic Association Summer Program at Michigan State University, which introduced him to Research in Color. Gabriel’s main research interest is inequality, in particular its intersection with race. This stems from his personal experiences and family history. Gabriel intends to earn a PhD in Economics and pursue a career in research to contribute to the creation of public policy informed by empirical economic research, which enables people to overcome poverty and adverse economic outcomes, especially ones caused by global economic events and personal crises. He hopes to become an economics professor or public sector economist and government advisor.

James Monroe Gamble IV attended the University of Missouri, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with an emphasis on economics and a minor in mathematics. Upon graduation, he attended Harvard University as a participant in the Research Scholar Initiative before joining the Federal Reserve Bank Of San Francisco (FRBSF) as a Research Associate. Currently, Monroe is a Ph.D. Excellence Initiative Fellow at the NYU Stern School of Business. Monroe is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, as well as an alumnus of the Summer Research Opportunities Program (The Ohio State University, Michigan State University), Big Data Summer Institute (University of Michigan), and American Economic Association Summer Program. He has published research in the American Journal of Undergraduate Research, Issues in Political Economy, the MU McNair Journal, in addition to co-authoring an FRBSF Economic Letter. Monroe’s research interests center on leveraging technology and financial markets to create educational and economic opportunity. Currently, Monroe is working with Dr. Peter Blair Henry to study how political and economic reforms affect emerging economies’ access to capital.

Joevas Asare currently serves at the International Growth Centre as a Policy Economist and Thematic Lead for Energy and Environment research. He holds a master’s degree in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a first class bachelor’s degree in Economics with Finance from the University of Surrey. Joevas’s focus has been development of Africa through economic research and policy advice. He served as a UK-sponsored ODI Fellow in Somaliland’s Ministry of National Planning and Development, and Zanzibar’s Ministry of Finance. He has also held economic research positions at the Commonwealth and African Development Bank, and has managed FCDO and DANIDA development programmes through Tetra Tech. Joevas’s current research interests are in energy and environment, with a focus on access to energy, mitigating negative effects of increased energy demand, and adaptation to climate change, with a focus on Africa.

Juan Sebastian Lozano is a Research Specialist at Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESoC) Lab. Previously he was the leader of the Data4Peace team at Innovations for Peace and Development, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in pure mathematics. His primary research interests are in the political economy of conflict and in research methods. While at ESoC, Juan worked with the International Crisis Group to support quantitative work on the economics of conflict, especially in understanding the role of the extractives industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, he works on a variety of issues related to climate change and conflict, especially deforestation in Latin America. Juan's research interests in statistical methods includes improving spatial econometric techniques, and better estimation techniques for inference involving machine learning. In machine learning, he is interested in applications of generative modeling, reinforcement learning, and quantum natural language processing to social sciences.

Kate Fairley is a predoctoral research fellow with the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and is currently working on her Master of Arts in Economics at the University of Victoria, Canada. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Victoria. Kate’s research focus is at the intersection of labor, public, and urban economics where she studies discrimination and disparities in the labor and housing markets. She is currently working under Dr. Rebecca Diamond at Stanford, studying the effects of family proximity on labor market outcomes. She has previously worked on projects relating to economic development on Indigenous Reserves, the long-term effects on children of maternity leave reforms, and police response to racially-motivated protests. Kate currently holds a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Kayla Jones is a 2018 alumna of Morgan State University where she received her Bachelors of Science in Economics. After graduation, she participated in the Research Scholar Initiative, a pre-doctoral program at Harvard University where she worked as a research assistant for Professor Karen Dynan, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury during the Obama Administration. Currently, Kayla is a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the Consumer and Community Affairs section. In this capacity, she helps conduct research on emerging consumer financial issues, including access to credit and banking services, fintech, and financial literacy to assess implications for economic and supervisory work in the division. Kayla is interested in using the tools of economic research to help improve the socio-economic status of people of color in terms of access to capital and credit, financial inclusivity and income equality. Additionally, she serves as the Chief Community Engagement Officer of the Sadie Collective, a non-profit organization to help increase the representation of black women in economics, finance, public policy and data science.

Lidya Stamper graduated from the University of Redlands in 2019, where she received BAs in International Relations and Public Policy. During her undergraduate years, Lidya worked in peace and conflict research, human rights advocacy, public policy analyses, with a number of legislative and legal organizations. Following graduation, Lidya received a Fulbright Research fellowship to conduct research in South Africa. Over the course of several months, Lidya conducted qualitative research on the cultural, structural, and economic challenges that impede internally displaced women from accessing sexual and reproductive health services in the Gauteng province of South Africa, in affiliation with the Centre for Human Rights (CHR). This research was an extension of her previous work at CHR in 2018, where she collaborated with the United Nations on the ”2019 Global Study on Women Deprived of Liberty,” by synthesizing the discrepancies between human rights policies and practices throughout Africa. Following her Fulbright research, Lidya returned to Seattle, Washington to join a local housing justice nonprofit, where she is currently expanding on her interest in advocating for displaced populations. Lidya is interested in understanding the broader implications of policy paradigms, and how policy agendas account for social, economic, and political contexts. Lidya plans to attend the London School of Economics for her MSc in Social Research Methods in 2021. She hopes to pursue a career in women’s rights and policy evaluation, with a focus on increasing and ensuring access to reproductive health options for women living in crises-affected communities.

Mma Amara Ekeruche is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA). In addition, she runs a column, ‘Your Nigerian Economist’, on Stears Business, a leading African business publication. She holds a Master’s in Economic Policy from University College London (UCL), U.K., and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. Her research interests are development economics, public finance, and macroeconomic management. Consequently, her research experience cuts across key issues in development including government debt, South-South Cooperation, and the impact of Chinese investment in Africa. Her work has been featured on Brookings, the United Nations Office on South-South Cooperation, Southern Voice, Africa Portal, as well as on think tanks. Mma was awarded the IMF Youth Fellowship in 2020.

Mustafa Zahid is currently a Data Analyst at Emendata, a research and data analytics firm, where he works on projects surrounding healthcare and healthcare delivery. In May of 2019, he graduated with a master of science degree in international and development economics from the University of San Francisco. Prior to this, Mustafa pursued a bachelor’s degree in international studies to expand his knowledge of the roots of social issues, and how to address them. When he took a class in development economics, he fell in love with the field and decided to get a minor in economics. He chose economics for the fact that it approaches social issues with a scientific data-driven lens to disentangle complex relationships, and evaluate solutions to social dilemmas. Between 2018 and early 2020, he worked on a project to investigate the impact of Cleft Lip and Palate, and CLP surgeries on the life outcomes of adolescent patients in India. In the last two years of the research study, he led the project on and off the field. Recently, he participated in the co-authoring of a working paper presenting the results from the impact evaluation study. Mustafa’s research experience includes refugee assimilation in host countries, child and adolescent health, and impact evaluation of development programs. Mustafa is interested in the fields of development economics, health economics, and environmental and climate economics, including the intersection of the three.

Nikita Sharma is the managing editor for VoxDev, a platform for taking development economics from research to practice, at the International Growth Centre, based at the London School of Economics. While her work entails engaging with research across the development economics spectrum, economics of education and education policy are especially close to her heart. Previously, Nikita worked as a research assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, providing data support to the field team conducting surveys for a randomized controlled trial in Kenya. Nikita has a master’s in International and Development Economics from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in economics from Miranda House, University of Delhi.

Olamide Bola is currently a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. While Olamide hopes to pursue a PhD in economics, she first began her journey at the Ohio State University where she was exposed to social justice-focused works by activists and theorists like Audre Lorde and James Baldwin. Along with her lived experiences, these radical works sparked a desire to conduct research that is relevant to her life and other marginalized peoples’. Thus, in 2017, Olamide conducted her first independent research project as a Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) fellow where she studied racial wage differentials across fields. This experience solidified her commitment to using economics as a tool to explore inequality and marginalization. In 2018 she participated in the American Economic Association Summer Program (AEASP) where she and her partner won “Best Research Topic” for a study in which they analyzed police stops of non-whites in gentrified neighborhoods. After graduating in 2019, Olamide completed an internship at the Ohio Housing Finance Agency. There, she studied housing inequality and mortgage loan discrimination in Ohio. Olamide’s research interests include the marriage and dating market, colorism, and China’s foreign direct investment in Nigeria. When she’s not researching, studying or working Olamide enjoys candle collecting, watching reality TV and cuddling with her 11 year old Cairn Terrier Wellington, who she affectionately calls “Welly”.

Parthu Kalva is a researcher interested in studying the economics of crime and prison reform. Prior to his master’s, Parthu worked at an alternative-to-prison program in Berkeley, CA called the Reset Foundation, where he fostered a strong interest in restorative justice and recidivism reduction. As a graduate student and consultant at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Parthu helped map the associations between child disability and educational outcomes in Malawi using regression analysis and structural equation modeling. Currently, he is working with IFPRI to support a costing analysis of a milk trader training program in Kenya. In the future, Parthu is interested in applying his skills in microeconomics and econometrics towards compiling a library of research tools to assess the impact of recidivism reduction and restorative justice interventions. Parthu holds a dual master’s from the Fletcher and Friedman schools at Tufts University, where he specialized in development economics and agricultural policy.

Precious Fasakin is a final year undergraduate student of Economics and Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. Her recent research focuses on West Africa and the potential to utilize community-based media and radio programming for empowerment and socio-economic development. During her junior year, she was selected by the university as a Chancellor’s Research Fellow and pursued independent, funded research on the subject. Precious has worked as an NSF undergraduate research assistant, a board member of her university’s research journal, and most recently, was recognized as the American Economic Association Summer Program valedictorian at Michigan State University. Her university interests include her work as a journalist and host through her radio program, which highlights the cultures and communities of the African continent and its diaspora, connecting her research with this weekly broadcasting program. Her interests lie at the intersection of socio-economics, media and journalism studies, cooperative economics and Africana studies. Precious plans to pursue a doctoral degree and serve as an educator, researcher and journalist.

Rana Mohie Eldin graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a minor in computer science. She also holds a master’s degree in Economic Analysis from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (BGSE). She had the goal of pursuing a PhD and a career in academia, so she decided to compliment her knowledge from her master's degree with deep theoretical knowledge in economics. This is why she is currently doing a funded master's of research program in Economics at the University of Carlos III in Madrid. Rana worked with the Egyptian government on a policy evaluation project for their new ration program as part of a co-operation with her previous employer. She then worked briefly in a policy research center in Cairo where she worked on a project evaluating alternative taxation policies for Egypt. Rana received the honors scholarship from the American University in Cairo to cover her tuition fees; the scholarship is awarded to the student with the top score among the university’s applicants. Rana's research interests are in macroeconomics including both international macroeconomics, and labor economics. Her first master's thesis was on international macroeconomics with a focus on developing countries where she explored a novel forecasting approach to the problem of predicting currency crises. She is also interested in applied labor economics work in developing countries

Rania Nasir is a Policy Economist, specializing in firms, trade and productivity, at the International Growth Centre (IGC). In this capacity, she currently manages the Small and Growing Business Evidence Fund, an innovative collaboration between researchers and practitioners to understand the most effective ways to support small and growing businesses and the socio-economic impact of their growth. Rania is also working with Aceli Africa to research the underlying issues in finance for agricultural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in East Africa. She has worked closely with IGC country teams in Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Bangladesh, and Ghana, and has co-authored one of IGC’s flagship Growth Briefs, “Suffocating Prosperity”. Previously, she worked as a Business Advisor and a Results Measurement Specialist in Palladium Group and Cardno Emerging Markets to help private sector firms deliver innovative interventions in the agriculture sector to trigger systemic changes and create broad-based, sustainable, pro-poor growth. She has also worked on a randomized control trial (RCT) that investigated whether and how vocational training programs provide economic opportunities in Pakistan as well as an RCT on how to increase local political accountability in Uganda. Rania has a variety of research interests, including understanding how to provide more opportunities to local researchers, how to increase the impact of SMEs, and how to meaningfully improve the workplace for underrepresented minorities. She was also awarded the Fulbright Masters Scholarship for the years 2012-2014 and holds a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University, concentrating on Economic and Political Development and specializing in Advanced Economic Policy Analysis.

Rhythm Banerjee is a graduate student in Development Studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is currently a visiting student pursuing Quantitative Economics at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research interests include topics in international economics involving macro-fiscal policy, systemic risk and counter-cyclicality. He is also passionate about the macroeconomics of environmentally vulnerable countries. He is currently working with the Sustainable Development Goals Finance division at UNDP Geneva and previously interned with leading consulting firms in India and Uganda. Rhythm is a recipient of the Bhajan Lal Scholarship for Environment and is a Member of the Leader’s Forum of The Global Education and Leadership Foundation. Prior to IHEID, he was a research assistant at the Genpact Centre for Women's Leadership and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ashoka University with an Advanced Research Diploma and a B.A. (Honors) in Economics. His thesis was a multinomial logit model assessing how shifts in income groups affect trends in energy consumption in India. Rhythm was born in New Delhi, India.

Roy Randen is currently a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University – Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he is pursuing a Masters in International Economics & Finance. Before SAIS, he served two years as part of the leadership team for the Yale Young African Scholars program – an academic enrichment and university access program for African high school students. Roy’s research interests are in political economy and the microeconomics of development. While an undergraduate student, he was a Research Assistant with Professor Christopher Udry, where he worked to examine the impact of various interventions on the productivity of smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana. At SAIS, he is on the editorial board for the International Finance and Economics Review publication, and will be conducting research with Professor Peter Lewis in spring 2021. Roy holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics & Mathematics from Yale University.

Santiago Deambrosi joined the American Enterprise Institute as a Research Assistant at the Poverty Studies Unit in February 2020. He previously spent a year at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy managing research studies on US welfare programs, systemic racism, and wealth inequality – all with a focus on families and child outcomes. Santiago has worked at The Hamilton Project, the Economics Unit of the Brookings Institution, and at Innovations for Poverty Action. During his undergraduate degree, Santiago co-founded a local chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS) and led multiple minority organizations including the Latin American Student Organization and the Third Culture Kids Club.

Santiago is an applied microeconomist with interests in public policy, poverty and welfare, child outcomes, and environmental economics and policy. He received an M.S. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in the Spring of 2020.

Sara Restrepo currently works at the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank with Patricio Domínguez and at the Jain Family Institute as a Research Fellow at the Guaranteed Income project. She holds a Master of Public Policy and an M.A. in economics from Universidad del Rosario. Previously, she worked at Innovations for Poverty Action on RCTs looking to reduce the gap in STEM programs between K-12 girls and boys, and measuring the impact of VAT devolution to the poorest in expenditure outcomes. Before that, she worked at the Central Bank of Colombia exploring lending and borrowing channels and its effects. During her undergraduate education, she received a merit-based scholarship. She also was the President of the Economic student council in 2015, where she led the largest undergraduate economic contest and forum. Sara’s current research interests include crime economics, labor economics (especially informality and gig-economies), guaranteed income, conflict and its effects on society (education, credit access, agriculture, etc.), and behavioral economics. She is from Pereira, Colombia.

Selene Cueva is currently a Senior Research Associate at J-PAL LAC in Chile where she works in the impact evaluation of projects regarding labor market inclusion, disabilities, gender, and higher education. Previously, she worked for two years as the data analyst of an ed-tech project in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. Before joining J-PAL LAC, she worked as a research assistant at the Group for Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Lima, Peru. Last year, she won the 2020 MIDIS National Award for the best social research paper by young researchers in Peru. Selene’s current research interests are social protection, disabilities, and gender. She plans to study the interactions between disabilities and labor markets. At the same time, she is interested in family planning topics and gender inequalities in developing countries. In addition, she is an economics history enthusiast. Selene earned a B.A. in Economics from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. She is from Piura, Peru.

Sneha Verma is a final year undergraduate student at the University of Kansas studying economics with a minor in mathematics. Her research interests are in urban, development, and labor economics. She is particularly curious about the spread of misinformation, algorithmic bias, and the rural/urban digital divide. Sneha conducted a study, published by the International Conference of Advanced Visual Interfaces, in which she investigated non-urban aspirations towards technology in two metropolitan Kansas towns. On campus, she served as the Director of Policy and Development with the KU Student Senate, Director of Public Good with the KU Blockchain Institute, and as a volunteer frontend developer with 1DaySooner. In her free time, Sneha enjoys cooking, hiking, and crocheting.

Srishti Gupta is a third-year undergraduate student at New York University, pursuing a double major in Economics and Global Liberal Studies with a concentration in Politics, Rights and Development, and a minor in Mathematics. Born and raised in India, she is interested in studying the rise of income inequalities and their effect on the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent over the last few decades. Srishti’s research interests also include agricultural economics and public finance. This past summer, she worked as a Research Intern at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, assisting with research on the Indian parliament. On campus, Srishti writes a weekly column for the Business and Economics section of NYU International Relations Society’s daily online publication, IR Insider, and serves as a Print Editor at NYU’s Journal of Politics and International Affairs

Tanya Sethi is currently an ODI fellow at the Ministry of Finance in Guyana. In this role, she produces research focused on the fiscal and monetary sector and helps make administrative data more accessible to policymakers to facilitate evidence-based policymaking. Before this, Tanya worked as a Research Assistant at the London School of Economics on a project on female participation in India’s labor market. She has also worked as a Research Associate at the J-PAL South Asia on a large-scale RCT in the electricity sector of the Indian state of Bihar. She holds a BA in Economics from the University of Delhi and an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS University of London where she was a Commonwealth Shared Scholar. Tanya’s current research interests are in Political Economy, Development Economics, Behavioral Economics, and Public Economics.

Vaasavi Unnava (pronounced VAH-suh-vee) is currently a Master’s student in Economics and Social Sciences at Bocconi University, Italy. After graduating with a B.S. in Economics at Carnegie Mellon University in 2017, she took her first dive into economics research at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, where she worked as a Research Assistant in the Division of Research and Statistics. She then spent one year at the Yale Program on Financial Stability, working as a Research Associate under Andrew Metrick, writing case studies to catalogue and assess policy interventions developed in response to financial crises, specifically focusing on the Japanese Financial Crisis. During these few years, she learned about her passion for economics research, and hopes to apply to PhD programs to matriculate in 2022. Though Vaasavi’s research interests originated in macro-finance, international finance, and monetary policy, she has also recently become interested in political economy. Additionally, during her time at Bocconi, she hopes to explore finance applications to development economics. Vaasavi is a Rotary Global Grant Scholar and has received awards both for her service work and her work advancing women in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

Vanessa Wanyandeh researches the ways in which advancements in the tech industry benefit, harm, and shape society, particularly for marginalized communities. As an intern at Facebook, Vanessa examined the severe implications unmoderated social media has on election legitimacy, particularly for 2020 US congressional and presidential candidates with diverse backgrounds. Her research led her to an unsettling conclusion about modern social media: while it provides a platform for countless underserved communities to share information and raise awareness, it also harbors large quantities of misinformation that further oppress marginalized voices and polarize society overall. As a 2019 Harvard Summer Ventures in Management Program (SVMP) participant and a 2020 IDDEAS@Wharton Scholar, Vanessa discovered an interest in academia. In the future, she hopes to pursue a doctoral degree with a focus on digital sociology and user data collection, specifically centering on how the tech industry deals with conflicts of interest. Currently, Vanessa works as a Strategy Analyst at Accenture in the New York City office. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics with a concentration in Business Analytics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Victoria Agwam is a second-year undergraduate student at Princeton University concentrating in Politics on the Political Economy track. Her interest in economics was sparked at a young age, as she always aspired to one day participate and lead in economic development efforts in Africa. At an undergraduate level, Victoria's research interests have evolved to include transportation and supply chain logistics in addition to economic development. Last summer, Victoria interned at PolicyLink, a national research and action institute, working with the CEO, Michael McAfee, to draft a concept paper that theorizes the role of the U.S. federal government in incentivizing the adoption of racial equity policy within the private and public sector. In the upcoming summer, she will continue developing her research skills as an intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the Research and Statistics group.

Eric Ji is currently pursuing a master's degree in computational social science at University of Chicago. Previously a journalist, his current research interests relate to political economy from interdisciplinary perspectives. While studying in graduate school, Eric also worked as a pricing strategy intern on derivatives market, analyzing incentive structures on the micro-level to build liquidity. Eric holds a B.A. with honors in economics and finance.