I am Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh working with the Jameel Observatory for Food Secuity Early Action to use early warning and ancitipatory action to reduce the negative impacts of environmental shocks and climate change on households. I have spent years working with the IBLI team at International Livestock Research Institute to reduce the impacts of drought on pastoralists in the Horn of Africa. I also have an interest in developing approaches for collecting high-frequency longitudinal data, which has been applied in several settings including crowdsourcing information on rangeland conditions (CSRC), monitoring livestock markets (KAZNET), developing tools for caregivers to self-report health and nutrition information (Mbiotisho), setting up a network of sentinel zones for drought monitoring (DIRISHA – SZs), and for tracking post-flood recovery in Malawi (MIRA).

My interest in development economics started while spending two years in Mali as a Peace Corps Volunteer. That interest led me to the University of Missouri-Columbia where I received my Master's in Agricultural and Applied Economics as a Peace Corps Fellow. I then received my PhD in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University.