Jimena Rico-Straffon is a Ph.D. student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Duke University and a B.A. in Economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Her professional experience includes conducting research on inequality, deforestation, monetary policy, and environmental policy at Mexico's central bank, the World Wildlife Fund US, and Mexico's National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change. Her research interests include natural resource economics, development, gender and racial inequality, and intergenerational social mobility. Her current research focuses on forest policy, as well as on the role of skin color on teenagers’ aspirations and investments in education.

Ruth Morales is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at UC Santa Barbara. Before starting at UCSB, she earned both a B.A. and M.A. in economics from San Diego State University. Her primary research interests are in labor economics and public economics. She is especially interested in investigating outcomes related to education, crime, and immigration policies. Her current lines of research focus on the demographic effects of the Bracero Program and on the impact of college-level remedial education reform in the community college system.

Gabrielle Benoit is a MA/PhD student in the Geography Department. She seeks to investigate the interactivity of people, places, and environment (built and natural) as they relate to public health challenges in our society. Of particular interest to her is the relationship between the quality of one’s gastrointestinal bacteria and inflammatory diseases, chronic immune conditions, cancer development, and neuroendocrine disorders.

She earned a bachelor’s of science in nursing from the University of Portland. Previously, she has worked in oncology and public health. Most recently, she was working with the Public Health Institute on their Tracing Health Program, which launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; they provide counties and local health departments with contact tracing, scientific support, and community resources to encourage successful implementation of quarantine.

I am a Ph.D. student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in Economics. My research interests are in labor economics, public economics, and health economics. I am currently researching policy changes that affect fertility.