Hi! I’m Karsen, a senior at Stanford pursuing a B.A. with Honors in economics, B.S. in math, and M.S. in computer science with a specialization in AI. I’m passionate about tackling big questions in economics and policy, and am fortunate to be advised by Professors Pete Klenow and Nicholas Bloom.

Currently, I’m co-authoring a monetary policy paper with Dr. Kinda Hachem at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a game theory paper on ranked-choice voting with Professor Avidit Acharya. I’m also helping organize a policy agenda at Stanford around abundance and working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for introductory economics. On campus, my home away from home is the public service community; I serve on the National Advisory Board of the Haas Center for Public Service, as a Residential Assistant in the Public Service House, and as a Peer Advisor for both the Haas Center and the Economics Department. I previously oversaw the fellowships program at Stanford in Government, placing over 80 students in fully-funded policy internships.

In the past, I’ve worked for the public interest tech startup Propel, the US Treasury, End Poverty in California, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and various Stanford faculty members. I founded and managed The Polling Place, a nonprofit that provides information on local candidates running for office. I’ve taken graduate-level coursework in microeconomics, machine learning, market design, labor economics, economic history, natural language processing, graph theory, causal inference, convex optimization, and statistics/econometrics.

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 dog. I love meeting new people – feel free to reach out at kwahal@stanford.edu!