J-PAL North America Staff Spotlight: Homelessness & Housing Stability Team

I heard about J-PAL while earning an MSc at the London School of Economics in the Department of Government. We’d covered J-PAL studies in my classes, and my thesis advisor recommended J-PAL when I was looking for positions after grad school. The application and interview process felt competitive but extremely unbiased, which I appreciated. 

I enjoy working closely with J-PAL affiliated researchers, like our co-chair for the State and Local Innovation Initiative, Bruce Sacerdote. I actually cited his work in my master’s dissertation (thanks, Bruce!). With my dissertation, I primarily worked independently; I had a thesis advisor, but I alone was responsible for thinking through my research design. Now I support the Request for Proposals process, and I’m able to see how our co-chairs consider research design and identify feasible projects in order to award funding.

My master’s dissertation focused on how Congressional stockholding impacts the way votes are cast in the House of Representatives. In the study, I employed a Differences in Differences design and exploited the timing of the stock market crash in 2008 to compare voting habits of stockholding and non-stockholding representatives before and after the crash. J-PAL has funded randomized evaluations on political economy and voting, and I’m really interested in potential misalignment between government policies and public demand. In my eyes, J-PAL seeks to reconcile this misalignment by trying to inform policy with what communities need.

Working at J-PAL has made me more cognizant of how to use evidence in policy, and how so many contemporary policies could be improved by leaning on economics research. I also think there are increasingly more opportunities for federal, state, and local governments to use evidence in their decision-making—the funding provided by the American Rescue Plan is a recent example. In the future, I’m keen to pursue research that fills gaps in our understanding of what policies work.

I like hiking quite a bit, and I’ve wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for a long time. I think my goal would be to climb it and bring a little speaker so I can listen to “Africa” by Toto as the sun rises at the top—I think that would be ideal.

I grew up in Russia, a country with a very different economic history from the United States, and was drawn to study economics in college. I appreciated that it could be used to understand high-level systems with real impact on communities. Economics was very abstract, however, and so along with economics and Russian, I began studying consumer and family financial services. 
 
During an internship at a financial planning start-up and my time as a peer financial coach at The Ohio State University, it became clear that it wasn’t just lack of awareness or individual-level access that served as barriers to financial inclusion. I witnessed how these services were inaccessible to much of the population in ways that were difficult for individual organizations to address. I was drawn back to economics as a discipline that had the tools to both understand and address these systemic barriers. During my senior year, I learned about the exciting work J-PAL does to translate evidence and data into action to promote community wellbeing and reduce poverty. I started out as an intern after graduation and transitioned into a Policy Associate role in January. 

I love working on our State and Local Innovation Initiative. I especially appreciate learning about what state and local government agencies across the country are doing to support their communities. I’ve enjoyed actively collaborating with governments to review existing evidence on social programs. Recently, I’ve also supported the design of new evaluations to assess promising solutions to pressing policy challenges.

J-PAL staff care deeply about the work we do. At J-PAL, your experiences, interests, and passions are valued. I encourage a prospective candidate to share their interests and experiences during the hiring process. 

A life goal I have is to climb Mount Elbrus (or in Balkar, Mingi Tau [Минги тау]). It’s the tallest mountain in Europe, located in the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia and is, in my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the world. 

I was drawn to J-PAL North America because of my interest in domestic poverty alleviation. I grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Chicago. I remember filling out SNAP applications for my immigrant neighbors as an 11-year-old because they didn’t know where to turn to for help. I remember being excited to work in my local library through One Summer Chicago, a summer youth employment program, after spending previous summers indoors because of lack of available opportunities. Because of my personal experience, I know the potential impact J-PAL’s work can have on people living in poverty, because they are my community. I don’t have to imagine who can benefit from our work; it’s my community that could benefit when we get things right. I’m very glad to be in a position to grapple with these issues and hopefully change things for the better. 

I was a developmental psychology major and was interested in the research process: how to use experiments to answer questions and use data to back up claims. That made it easier to transition from psychology to economics, even though I only took one economics class. Outside of academics, during all four years of college, I volunteered at a student-run organization that provided free legal information to those navigating through the Massachusetts small claims court system. There, I was shocked that the legal system would make it so difficult for the people it is meant to serve. 

When I started leading the crime and violence prevention work at J-PAL, I spent a lot of time thinking about the roles of institutions and policies on an individual’s interaction with the legal system, rather than seeing it as an individual decision. Are there obstacles leading them to criminal activity? Or is there something about their environment that is increasing their risk of interacting with the criminal legal system? How can we work on addressing those factors instead of just focusing on the individual? 

There are many state and government leaders who have the interests of their constituents at heart and want to use evidence to guide their decisions, but they have capacity constraints. I enjoyed helping leaders to think through strategies and navigate obstacles with their policies and programs. 

I started learning Chinese calligraphy at six years old. When I was nine, my work was included in a published selection of calligraphy. I have a Level 8 certification out of 9 levels. One day, I hope to receive the Level 9 certification, but we will see how it goes. 

I have an academic research background, which reflects my interest in research and belief in evidence-based decisions. I focused on political science in undergrad and in my PhD. One thing grad school taught me was I didn’t want to be an independent researcher working in isolation. I wanted to do something on the ground, with a team, and have direct policy relevance. J-PAL was a place where I could do that. 

The healthcare hotspotting project, which I worked on when I first arrived, remains my favorite. I showed up when the actual research was complete, so I was able to quarterback the last part—managing the publication and dissemination process. It was challenging because we found a null result for a popular program. That meant considering the interests of our implementing partner while trying to share the results of the study and make a point about the value of randomized evaluations, all while dealing with the unfamiliar world of medical journal publishing and media embargoes. Ultimately, we were able to make a big impact while maintaining nuance. Two years later, people continue to reach out about the study, often with an interest in evaluating their own similar interventions. 

I feel like both people within and outside academic research don’t often think that research needs management. It’s not a role I was aware of before coming here. But it’s super important to keep a project moving forward. I coordinate with researchers to make sure everyone is on the same page, and I work with partners to make academic analysis plans feasible on the ground. I even play “pretend lawyer” in trying to get institutions to sign data use agreements or secure IRB approval. There’s a lot of negotiating to make sure a project gets completed. I’m often putting out fires that no one knows about and solving problems before they arise, and that’s very satisfying to me.

We don’t pay enough attention to the 1800s in the US, especially Reconstruction. We miss that era in history class; it’s not part of our American mythology. It was an era where we attempted to construct a pluralistic society and multiracial democracy, which saw a lot of progress but ultimately led to failure. It would be interesting to see that period and understand how it’s instructive to the current time and place. It’s important in this role too, as someone trying to understand policy and poverty alleviation in the US, to consider similar efforts in other periods and learn from them. 

I have two favorite things. The first is the people and community. I have some of the most intelligent and supportive coworkers I could hope for. There is great mentorship in the office but also an amazing support system outside of work, which has been so helpful because I moved to a new city for this position.

The second is the mission of reducing poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Academic research can be hard to digest, so I love working on the communications team to reach people across platforms and share research results in an accessible way—whether through a tweet, a blog, or an op-ed. 

In undergrad, I studied anthropology and public health, with a minor in Middle Eastern studies. I always knew that I wanted to work in public health but was still figuring out how I wanted to do that. Initially, I was interested in humanitarian work and health systems for migrants and refugees. I learned a lot about global health systems while studying abroad in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Ghana, and Europe, and thought I would go into global health work. 

But when Covid-19 happened, there was increased visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans—which is very relevant to my own community. Those events made me want to focus on domestic issues, which led me to J-PAL North America. 

Even though I studied global health, my previous experience still applies because we can learn from other countries about what works. My background in qualitative research also comes up a lot in staff conversation, as some other members of our policy team don’t have a background in economics.  We can have open conversations to constructively critique the work we do and look at our studies from different perspectives. 

If you care about a job, you can do the job. It’s important to be passionate and eager to learn—I come from a qualitative background and had to study randomized evaluations before my interview, but I learned! 

I wasn’t fully confident during the application and interview process because I kept thinking: “I’m not an economist; I don’t have my master’s; I don’t have the same experience as the other staff.” Now I know there are so many staff members here to support me as I learn new things. 

Instead of feeling uncomfortable because you don’t know something, be open to exploring a new field. It’s easy to want to be the smartest person in the room, but if you’re willing to learn, you have more opportunities for growth and change. 

I graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst where I studied political science. I served as an AmeriCorps member as my first job out of undergrad. A large part of my service was focused on food security for the local community. While I really loved working in direct service, I was frustrated because there always seemed to be systemic issues that I couldn’t fix at the direct service level.

So I decided to go back to graduate school at NYU Wagner for my Master’s in Public Administration. I was then introduced to the world of evidence-based policy through my first job post-grad school, where I worked to connect individual researchers and with state, local, and federal policymakers. Then three years ago I came to J-PAL, where I now lead our Health Care Delivery Initiative. 

I don’t think I’d be here if I hadn’t gone to the particular grad program I attended. For one, it was there that I was exposed to Poor Economics and the work of J-PAL. My graduate work also opened my eyes to a different way to think about policymaking, beyond the party politics that we see on the news or that I was exposed to as an undergrad. Policymaking is about building consensus, and while evidence isn’t the only tool to build consensus, it can be a really compelling one. 

I’ve really enjoyed working with policymakers on custom trainings. Policymakers will come to us and express interest in evidence but don’t know where to start. Those trainings open an opportunity to problem-solve collaboratively with a non-research audience. While we can’t solve every barrier to evaluation in a short session, I’m proud of the work we do to explain why evaluation is important, how it can be used in their work, what the limitations are, and the viable ways to work around those limitations. 

More generally, I love that J-PAL convenes a group of researchers who are trying to make their work useful and relevant to a community beyond other researchers. Research for research’s sake is great, but I think it’s important that it gets used and doesn’t remain behind a paywall. 

I would love to go back to France in the 1400s and follow Joan of Arc around. There is such a mythology around her and it’s hard to disentangle her Saint story from her story as a real, living woman. She convinced really powerful men to do things that didn’t make any sense, and I’m fascinated by that. 

I first learned about J-PAL during my sophomore year of undergrad from one of my economics professors. I was interested in more practical applications of economics, and she recommended I look at J-PAL. After looking at the website, J-PAL just seemed right in line with my thinking about how we should use evidence and quantitative research to tackle development and poverty alleviation. The next semester, I read Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. It was my favorite book⁠—I’ve probably read it three times since. So I had heard about J-PAL very early on and it became one of my goals to work at J-PAL one day.  I was very excited when I got this position at the North America office. At orientation, I became known as the “J-PAL Groupie” among the staff. 

I knew that in my career I wanted to make an impact somehow.  Prior to coming here, I worked in direct service. I’ve worked at an immigration firm and I also tutored at a high school with a high immigrant population. That work was really gratifying, but it was also really exhausting. At the end of the day, I knew I couldn’t change the systemic issues they were facing. I realized I wasn’t personally suited for direct service.

In this role, I love working with data, no matter the topic. But being able to tell a story with the data and answer big questions makes me feel that I can still make an impact without burning myself out. 

One thing that I’ve really taken in is that it’s really important to get perspectives from people who have very different life experiences at each step of the research process. People will interpret results so differently depending on their life experience, and that’s really important to acknowledge. 

The other lesson I find important is that you can rely on the people you work with. If there’s a coding problem or if there’s something that isn’t coming out right, it’s always better to get input from someone else. The expertise of your co-workers is one of your greatest resources, especially here at J-PAL North America. 

It changes all the time. I usually work in our spare room, and that works pretty well, but it’s also where my partner works. If we ever have meetings, I move downstairs to the living room and work at the folding table there. And if we don’t have childcare on a given day and my toddler is napping, I need to work on the other side of the apartment. I’ve really just had to make any space work!