I am an Associate Research Professor and the Executive Director of the Better Government Lab at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. My research focuses on the intersection between population health and poverty alleviation and uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to understand how government policies affect well-being. Recently, my work has focused on measuring how administrative burdens in the U.S. safety net affect program access, poverty, and health. I am also interested in how racialized minority groups and immigrants have been disproportionately denied access to government resources for which they are eligible through the imposition of administrative burdens.

Previously, I was the Director of Research and Evaluation at ideas42. I’ve been a non-resident associate at Tulane University’s Commitment to Equity Institute, both the Okun-Model Fellow in Economic Studies and a Non-resident Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and a postdoctoral research scholar at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. I hold a doctorate from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Global Health and Population (Economics Concentration) and an M.A. in economics from Boston University.

My research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Health Economics, The Lancet, and Health Affairs and has been featured by news organizations such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and The Hill. In addition, my research was cited by the Biden administration’s updated Public Charge Regulation.

Another strand of my research has investigated how investment in health programs can improve economic outcomes with a focus on HIV and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. One study explores the effect of PEPFAR on employment across sub-Saharan Africa, another examines labor market impact of Malawi’s antiretroviral therapy program, while another evaluates the schooling gains produced by a historical malaria eradication project in southwestern Uganda. Other work has studied social protection in Mexico and methods to incorporate government health spending into poverty measurement.