Alumni

Assistant Professor
The Pennsylvania State University

Lekha is a doctoral candidate in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Her research interests lie in natural resource policy making in developing countries and the role of institutions in water resource development. She is specifically interested in governance and implementation issues of water use and efficiency in ground water extraction in India. She uses the concepts of civic connectedness and game theoretic models to study the above. Prior to her studies in Michigan she worked in Prague at the Czech University of Agriculture as a research technician for their rural and regional development program. Lekha has an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and a BA in Economics from Fergusson College, Pune, India.

Nick White is a doctoral candidate in the School of Natural Resources & Environment and is focusing on environmental/public policy decision making and conflict resolution. Nick’s interests lie at the intersect of sustainability and the challenges of implementation; specifically the different processes of decision making, organizations that promote collaborative decision making, and issues of institutionalization. His doctoral research is focused on understanding the development and evolution of twenty-two state offices of conflict resolution and the resulting organizational field created by these organizations. Nick’s work experiences include: working for Michigan State Representative Ed LaForge, serving with the U.S. Peace Corps in Niger West Africa, ecosystem restoration for Nichols Arboretum, and interning with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to his doctoral research, Nick currently serves as a mediator, facilitator, and instructor of mediation in both academic and private sector settings.

Nathan Wilson is a doctoral candidate in the Business Economics program at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Nathan was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and received a BA in history from Brown University, where his senior thesis examined the economic and social aspects of industrial strife in Ireland. After teaching English for a year in Dalian, China, Nathan continued his studies at the London School of Economics, earning an MS in Global Economic History. Nathan then entered the Presidential Management Fellows program, working at the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration as an Industry Economist. Nathan did his external PMF rotation at Resources for the Future, a non-partisan economic think tank focusing on environmental and natural resources economics. Nathan's research uses applied microeconomic and econometric techniques to examine the impact of strategic and exogenous uncertainty on firm strategies.