Biography

As a California native with bi-racial British and Chinese heritage, I sensed a deep commitment to promoting exchange from an early age. My research to date has focused on two commodities—chocolate and coffee—with cross-cultural and interdisciplinary overlap. I study how these commodities are linked to broader concerns like human wellbeing and ecosystem services in the context of an evolving world. In 2011 I graduated from Wellesley College in 2011 with a B.A. in Economics and Spanish. My undergraduate thesis examined the role of cacao through the dynamically changing sociocultural history of Mexico. Upon completion of this work, I returned to Mexico to study coffee—a similar yet distinctly different commodity. Supported by a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship (2013-2014), I worked in collaboration with an ongoing interdisciplinary initiative called Café In Red at the Institute of Ecology, A.C. to understand socioeconomic considerations of small-scale coffee producers in Central Veracr