Hi!

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. I hold a Ph.D. in Development Economics from the Graduate Institute of Geneva (IHEID). I am on the 2026–27 academic job market.

I am an applied economist working on development, with an emphasis on agriculture, small enterprises, and how poor households respond to cash transfers and weather shocks. A common thread in my work is how gender and social norms shape these outcomes, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

My job market paper, Cash Is Queen: Local Economy Effects of Cash Transfers to Women in Nigeria (with Papineni, Goldstein, and Friedman), shows that cash transfers to women in ultra-poor households raised business ownership among both recipients and their non-recipient neighbors.

About Me

My research studies how poor households earn a living and respond to new resources and shocks, with particular attention to how gender and social norms shape who benefits. In my job market paper, we study the general equilibrium effects of an unconditional cash transfer to women in ultra-poor households in rural Northern Nigeria. A year after the payments ended, recipient women were 20 percentage points more likely to run a business and non-recipient women in the same villages were 13 percentage points more likely, with gains in consumption and food security for both groups. We estimate a partial income multiplier of at least 1.2.

My other research centers on agriculture and weather shocks. I study gender gaps in agricultural productivity and the constraints farmers face in adopting new practices, including through a large trial in Ghana. I also study how weather shocks affect farming households, from time allocation and time poverty to food security and child health, and how social norms shape women’s labor force participation, household decision-making, and opportunities for economic empowerment. My work combines randomized trials with high-frequency surveys, time-use diaries, wearable devices, and high-resolution climate data.

Before Northwestern, I worked at the World Bank with Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) and the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), and I continue to collaborate with researchers at GIL and the Development Research Group (DEC). I have also worked with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Center for Economic Development Studies (CEDE) at Universidad de los Andes, and QUANTIL.

I hold a BA and an MA in Economics from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. I was awarded a Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and, during my Ph.D., a Sylff Fellowship. Outside of work, I enjoy reading feminist literature, biking, and traveling.