For professional purposes:
I recieved my PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in May 2011. I
am presently working under professors Michael Kremer and Clair Null as
a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University on a large randomized
controlled trial run by Innovations for Poverty Action in western
Kenya. I am broadly interested in issues related
to causal inference in applied micro-econometrics, research design and
program evaluation, with a focus on applications in labor economics and
development economics. My
job
market paper is on the effect of war deaths of US soldiers on local
military recruiting. I enjoy teaching
a great deal--I helped develop and twice co-taught a course
on statistical impact evaluation with an
emphasis on global poverty programs, I have taught my own large
introductory course, and I have been a teaching
assistant six times in my my
graduate career.
For personal purposes:
I love to run and hike long distances. And by "long," I mean
"from border to border across the country" long.
I grew up in Reston, Virginia where I attained the Boy Scouts of
America rank of Eagle Scout and attended Thomas
Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology. Then
I
volunteered in Seoul,
South Korea for two years. In college I majored in
economics and graduated as department valedictorian, with University
Honors and magna cum laude.
Since 2002 I have hiked the entire Appalachian Trail (2168 miles from
Georgia to Maine), the entire Pacific Crest Trail (2658 miles from
Mexico to Canada), and become only the second (and fastest) person ever
to hike the Continental Divide Trail round-trip 2,800 miles each way
from Mexico to Canada and back in a single year. There's
a
Backpacker magazine article
about the hike. I have also run numerous
marathons
and
ultra-marathons. My 26.2 mile marathon personal best is 3:00:23,
my 50-mile best is 9:52 and my 100-mile best is 26:48. I like
Radiohead, Kurt Vonnegut,
and
films
by
Ingmar
Bergman.
