Kirsten Oleson, PhD

IPER's most recent grad is now serving as a Teaching Fellow with Stanford's new Masters in Public Policy Program.

Kirsten's dissertation research investigated the discrepancy between market and social prices of natural resources, looking at the sustainability of direct and indirect exports. She developed a national and global sustainability metric which takes into account depletion and degradation of natural resources and applied it to feed and livestock exports from the US to illustrate the notion of trading away environmental wealth.

Kirsten is an environmental engineer trained first at the University of Virginia (BS ‘96) and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands (MS ’98). More recently, she completed an MS in Applied Environmental Economics from Imperial College of London (’05).

For five years, Kirsten worked at the World Bank prior to joining IPER in the autumn of 2003. Her work at the World Bank focused on the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, remediation of industrial sites, compliance of projects with the World Bank’s environmental and social policies and corporate environmental strategy development. Her projects spanned the globe, including India, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. She is comfortable holding conversations over a beer or two in French, Spanish and Dutch. For two years, she served as an elected official of the World Bank’s Staff Association board, representing 8,500 staff to management on myriad issues. She won numerous awards at the World Bank and from community groups for her professional achievements and volunteer work.