Raised in Central Texas, Rias studied economics and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. While pursuing his undergraduate studies, he developed an interest in social policy and trends in human behavior. After graduation and a subsequent career in the arts, Rias worked with a nonprofit in Texas to develop and maintain affordable housing projects for senior citizens and veterans. For his MPA internship, he worked as a Policy Strategy Intern at the Japan Economic Foundation in Tokyo this past summer. At Princeton, Rias aims to further his understanding of economics, analytics, and public policy in order to positively impact the future of federal housing policy. Rias also enjoys gardening and classical guitar performance in his spare time.

Born and raised in the Midwest, Conway moved to Washington, D.C., for college and lived there for over a decade until coming to Princeton. Conway worked for the federal government for seven years, serving as a nonpartisan policy analyst for a bipartisan board of political appointees that advise federal policymakers on the social insurance and means-tested programs administered by the Social Security Administration that provide retirement, disability, and survivor benefits. After Princeton, Conway hopes to return to public service and use his graduate degree to improve people’s access to federal programs that support determinants of well-being like housing, health, and education. Conway graduated magna cum laude from George Washington University, where his senior thesis, which measured multidimensional poverty in the United States by nativity status, received special honors and earned him a research assistantship with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance. In his free time, Conway enjoys documentaries, Pilates, and hiking, and has served as a volunteer tax preparer.

Daisha was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts. She graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s in East Asian studies and the history of science, medicine, and public health. At Yale, Daisha received the Richard U. Light Fellowship twice for fully-funded foreign language study abroad. She studied Korean at Seoul National University’s language center and Mandarin at the CET program in Kunming, China. She interned remotely for the State Department in D.C. and in person at the consulate in Casablanca, Morocco. Daisha was selected as a 2023 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellow, and this summer completed her overseas internship with the U.S. Department of State in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Originally from North Carolina, Caroline graduated from Appalachian State University with a B.A. in Spanish Language and Literature and a B.S. in International and Comparative Politics. While an undergraduate student, she explored local impacts of global affairs in North Carolina through internships with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in Raleigh and the U.S. House of Representatives. Post-graduation, she spent a summer studying Turkish language through the Critical Language Scholarship, after which her passion for language learning and teaching led her to spend a year and a half teaching English in Istanbul, Turkey. Following this, she was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Nicosia, Cyprus, where she taught English in Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities and volunteered with peacebuilding and environmental initiatives. Most recently, she worked in Baku, Azerbaijan, with American Councils as the Resident Director for the Turkish Flagship Language Initiative Program and the Critical Language Scholarship program. At Princeton SPIA, she hopes to strengthen her regional expertise and deepen her understanding of intersections of climate change, conflict, and migration policy to be an impactful public servant. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, language learning, photography, and all types of dance.

Alex grew up in Milan, Italy, with family in Italy and California. Prior to joining Princeton SPIA, he was a political appointee in the Biden-Harris Administration, serving in various roles in the Department of Defense, including under the Deputy Secretary of Defense, under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies, and under the Chief Strategy Officer for Research of Engineering. He previously worked on the Biden for President campaign in 2020, for Governor Gavin Newsom during the 2021 recall campaign, and was one of the first team members of Europe Elects, creating their website and poll averages. Alex studied Engineering of Computing Systems at the Politecnico di Milano and at Princeton will continue to explore the role of investment in emerging technologies and industrial policy in the future of the United States.