Hilda Kegode, from Kenya, is currently pursuing her doctorate in Environmental/ Natural Resource Economics at the University of Pretoria.
Hilda’s parents, schoolteachers and subsistence farmers, instilled in her a lifelong appreciation for the value of education. She was successful academically and eager to pursue graduate studies. However, after completing her bachelor’s degree, she had to postpone those dreams to support her ailing mother and help educate younger siblings. Later, after working as a project administrator for CIRAD in Kenya, she obtained a master’s degree in environmental economics, then began working on impact assessment in East and West Africa with World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). During her seven years there, she became convinced that research must deliberately influence development interventions and that various socio-cultural factors including gender must be included in research design.
Her professional goal is to be an impact evaluation specialist in the areas of natural resource management and rural development, incorporating the views and needs of women. She is committed to using behavioral and experimental economics to better understand how to make interventions on natural resource use more effective, including to both target and empower rural communities in general and women in particular.
