I am an agricultural economist with a long-standing focus on Africa, a commitment that began while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia from 2001 to 2003. I earned my M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University (MSU) in 2009 and 2012, respectively. From 2010 to 2012, I was based in Lusaka, Zambia on a long-term overseas assignment—initially as a Specialist and doctoral candidate, and later as Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics (AFRE). My work there centered on the heavily subsidized maize and fertilizer sectors and involved both field research and the provision of research, outreach, and capacity-building support to the Food Security Research Project (now the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute, or IAPRI).

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In 2012, I joined Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment as a Research Scholar and Lecturer. After four years in Northern California, I founded Agricultural and Food Policy Consulting, through which I led survey-based research and analysis across Southern Africa. This work included the design and oversight of data collection for projects such as Africa RISING and, later, the MwAPATA Institute in Malawi. I was appointed Acting Research Director of MwAPATA in 2020 and continued to support its efforts as a Principal Investigator after rejoining the MSU faculty as Associate Professor in 2022.

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My research spans topics such as poverty dynamics, market participation, land ownership, fertilizer subsidies, farm productivity, sustainable intensification, value chain analysis, cost-benefit analysis, nutrition, and structural transformation. I have a particular interest in gender dynamics and the unequal distribution of productive assets, as well as in linking farm-level behavior to the physical and agronomic conditions in which it occurs. My experience in this area began with work at IAPRI to coordinate a first-of-its-kind effort to link site-specific soil sample analysis with nationally representative farm survey data. That work evolved into a broader program of research using field-based soil data, remote sensing, and geospatial tools to evaluate the adoption and impacts of farm management practices.

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Methodologically, I have contributed to the literature on multivariate statistics and am the author of the craggit package in Stata, which has helped standardize the estimation of double-hurdle models across a wide range of disciplines. As an educator, I have taught graduate courses in agricultural economics, econometrics, and survey design at the University of Zambia, Stanford University, IAPRI, and MwAPATA, and have guest lectured at universities throughout the U.S. and Africa.

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In recognition of my professional contributions, I have received the 2009 Best Thesis Award from MSU’s Department of Agricultural Economics, the 2009 award for Best Article in Agricultural Economics (the flagship journal of the International Association of Agricultural Economists), the 2013 Horizon Ribbon Award from Washington College (my undergraduate alma mater), and the 2017 Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. In 2019, I was named an “Outstanding Reviewer” by the editors of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and twice—during 2017/18 and 2020/21—my work has been recognized among the “Top Cited” papers in Agricultural Economics.

Since 2017, I have served on the Board of Directors of Food Tank, and from 2020 - 2024, I served as a member of the Editorial Board of The African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.