Practice Overview

As part of my work, I collaborate and consult with mission-driven organizations on practical challenges related to my areas of interest. Applying theory to practice tests the limits of existing social science, often yielding new insights and new questions. And, importantly for me, it offers an opportunity to make scholarship relevant and useful for the organizations and communities I work with. In iterating between research and practice, between action and reflection, I aim to cultivate a method of engaged scholarship— one that is able to integrate the specialization and abstraction of academic work with the broad vision and pragmatism needed to effectively tackle complex real-world challenges.

Below are some of the projects that I have worked on.

Projects

2024 - present. Strategy for Food Systems Change in Kenya.

Partner Organization: FSD Kenya

Co-developing a strategy for agroecological transformation to promote rural livelihoods, regional development, and ecological well-being as Kenyan farmers grapple with the pressures of globalization and climate change. Piloting new systems-change strategies for development organizations to fund and manage complex, multi-dimensional, and multi-stakeholder transformations.


2021 - 2023. Gender Inclusive Technology Interventions in Ethiopia.

Partner Organization: World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab

Project consultant on a team tasked with doing rapid assessments of technology interventions designed to foster economic inclusion for women in Ethiopia and make recommendations for further investment on that basis. Merged qualitative research practices with due diligence practices for rapid learning and project assessment. Prototyped new methodologies for identifying and assessing opportunities for economic inclusion. Managed the project team and liaised with partners at Hawassa University. Worked to shift the focus beyond individual entrepreneurship toward a broader systems view on inclusion.


2020 - 2022. Market Ecosystem Mapping to Guide Development Strategy.

Partner Organizations: FSD Kenya, Gmaurich Insights

To assess the development strategy of investing in agricultural market platforms, we mapped the ecosystem of actors involved with producing and distributing Nairobi’s fresh produce. Starting in Nairobi’s open markets, we tracked fresh produce through a network of brokers upcountry to farms and downstream to the various small-scale retailers who distribute fresh produce across the city. While market platforms claimed to replace ‘inefficient’ and extractive networks of brokers across the value chain, we found that brokers, when functioning effectively, served a vital role in helping small farmers and traders manage uncertainty. This finding identified the conditions under which platforms promoted market development (or not) and helped guide future investment strategy.


2019 - 2020. Survey of Everyday Digital and Economic Practices.

Partner Organizations: Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics

Designed a national survey matched to longitudinal data on digital behavior to study the impact of digital economy practices for individual and community resilience. Accompanied the survey team to urban, rural, and remote areas. Data collection disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the data that we did collect offered some of the first insights on social behavior in Kenya in the early days of the pandemic.


2018 - 2019. Piloting an Adaptive Consumer Protection Program.

Partner Organizations: Central Bank of Kenya, FSD Kenya, Debt and Dignity Network

Building on insights developed in my research, I worked with FSD Kenya and the Central Bank of Kenya to pilot an adaptive consumer protection program that integrated live consumer complaints data into a computational text model to identify emerging consumer protection issues. This need was driven by rapidly proliferating and largely unregulated mobile loan apps at the time, many of which were predatory.


2016. Understanding Post-University Labor Market Transitions in Uganda.

Partner Organizations: Princeton University, Makerere University

A large body of work looks to lift the lower-end of the labor market across sub-Saharan Africa; yet little work examines labor market trajectories for those with university degrees. We reveal and explain a significant gap between educational attainment and labor market outcomes (particularly for generations who have come up through the universal primary education system) with implications for individual well-being and how human capital is utilized (or not). I assisted with project conceptualization, project management, and data collection.

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