Hi! I’m Karsen, and I care deeply about tackling big questions in policy and economics.

I recently graduated from Stanford with a B.A. with Honors in Economics and a B.S. in Mathematics, where I was fortunate to be advised by Professors Pete Klenow, Nicholas Bloom, and Jose Ignacio Cuesta. This fall, I will complete my M.S. in Computer Science with a specialization in AI.

Currently, I’m helping build the future for frontline work at ReadyOn AI. I’m also helping organize a policy agenda at Stanford around abundance and serving on the National Advisory Board of the Haas Center for Public Service.

In the past, I’ve co-authored a game theory paper on ranked-choice voting with Professor Avidit Acharya (pending publication), worked on macroeconomic theory with Dr. Kinda Hachem at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, helped build benefits delivery systems at Propel, assisted with research projects on econometric theory and state debt structures, and conducted policy work at the US Treasury, End Poverty in California, the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. I’ve taken graduate-level coursework in microeconomics, machine learning, market design, labor economics, economic history, natural language processing, econometrics, graph neural networks, causal inference, and optimization.

In my free time, you can catch me climbing mountains (mountaineering, backpacking, climbing, hiking, you name it!), taking road trips with friends, reading (Substacks, short stories, memoirs, historical fiction), and playing with my dogs. I love meeting new people – feel free to reach out at kwahal@stanford.edu!