I am an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Systems in the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. My research is focused at the highest level on one broad question: how do we get from the food systems we have today to food systems across scales that are environmentally sustainable, resilient, healthy, equitable, provide for prosperous livelihoods, and just. Grounded in the theory and methods of applied economics, public health nutrition, and data science, I work in numerous interdisciplinary collaborations to answer specific questions that contribute to this broad vision of sustainable food systems transformation. I use detailed empirical analyses of primary and secondary data, both quantitative and qualitative, across settings and scales in the US, low-income countries (primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia), and globally.
One area of my work is dedicated to monitoring and evaluating food systems change in large interdisciplinary collaborations. This includes leading the analysis and management of the Food Systems Countdown Initiative, a large collaborative effort of over 60 multidisciplinary scientists from dozens of institutions working to monitor and understand food systems and their transformation to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and other global goals. Other work in this area is focused on better understanding inclusive rural transformation in low-income countries and strategies to increase the resilience and healthfulness of the US food system through improved and expanded production and consumption of whole grains and legumes. A subset of this body of work is informed by the data gaps in monitoring global food systems and works to devise and apply novel methodologies to estimate agrifood system statistics of employment and value added.
The second area concentrates on one sustainable food systems outcome: access to healthy and sustainable diets. This includes questions about what works throughout the entire supply chain, and through which interventions, to result in people having access, ability to afford, and desire to choose healthy and sustainable foods and diets. Some work in this area focuses on the cost and affordability of healthy diets, such as for whole families in Malawi or the affordability of the healthy diet promoted by the Government of Rwanda. Other work looks at consumer preferences and choices, such as understanding American consumers' willingness-to-pay for healthier and more sustainable food products.
My work has been published in top journals of applied economics (Food Policy, American Journal of Agricultural Economics), multidisciplinary food journals (Nature Food, Global Food Security), and public health (Lancet, Public Health Nutrition), among others. I have received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, among others.
I hold a PhD in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Before joining ASU, I was a Research Scholar (externally funded research faculty) at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to my PhD, I spent five years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a program officer in agricultural development where my work involved a wide range of issues including agriculture-environment interactions and sustainability, gender, food systems and nutrition, improving data generation and use, policy research, evaluation, and measurement. I received a Master of Public Administration and a Certificate in International Development from the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington where I also conducted food, agriculture, and development policy research as part of the Evans Policy Analysis & Research Group (EPAR). I completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at McGill University.