I am a PhD student in Political Science at UCLA. I study comparative politics, the political economy of development, and political behaviour.

A primary objective of my work is to understand the political, institutional, and behavioural barriers to evidence-based policy making, and how they can be overcome. My research is motivated by questions including: what factors prevent policy makers from applying high-quality social scientific research, particularly causal evidence, to pressing public policy challenges? What kinds of interventions can we develop to improve the use of evidence in policy making?

Before starting my PhD, I worked in a number of roles at the intersection of social science and public policy. I served as the inaugural Director of Research for the Penn Development Research Initiative - DevLab@Penn (PDRI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Before that, I was an Advisor with the Behavioural Insights Team’s (BIT) Canadian office in Toronto. I helped build BIT’s Canadian practice in its first two years of existence. Earlier, I was part of the Incubator team at Evidence Action in Washington, DC, an NGO that scales evidence-based development interventions to improve the lives of millions in low-income countries. I worked on sourcing, designing and prototyping development interventions backed by rigorous academic research. At some point before that, I was at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), where I did research on international trade, competition, and firm dynamics.

I hold an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a BSc in economics from Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Working papers

1. What is holding back the use of scientific evidence to inform social policy? (with Graeme Blair)

Selected other writing

1. It’s giving season - how do you ensure your charitable donations will be used effectively? 2021. Toronto Star. (with Ryan Briggs).