ABOUT
I'm a legal scholar, economist, and social entrepreneur whose body of work interrogates how we envision justice and how we can advance it.
I'm an Assistant Professor of Law at Northwestern University and a Faculty Fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. I have courtesy faculty appointments in the Northwestern Department of Economics and at the Kellogg School of Management.
In my research, I discovered a hidden mechanism—social network discrimination—that demonstrates mathematically why equal rules don't produce equal opportunities. This research, published in the Journal of Law and Economics and featured on NPR's All Things Considered, shows how opportunity flows unequally through relationships, systematically disadvantaging members of smaller groups. I've extended my economics research to explore its ramifications for constitutional law, including recent landmark Supreme Court cases that implicate the philosophy of "colorblind" constitutionalism.
In my heart, I'm still just a Chicago kid. But with a heritage and lineage tracing its roots across continents. "Education is arming yourself to the teeth," my father told me many times growing up. Later, I would discover this was more than just fatherly wisdom; he was disclosing hard-earned lessons. It was education that transformed his life, that allowed him to escape extreme poverty in southeastern Nigeria, that allowed him to trace his own American Dream, that of my family, and my own.
But I've also learned how elusive this American Dream can be. A graduate of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), I returned to work with the school district twice after college. And it was jarring how much reality would shift from driving just 20 minutes south of downtown. School attendance was abysmally low. We would hire adults to patrol the streets so students would know where they could travel safely during school transit. Some had never even seen downtown or the lakefront—entire worldviews shaped by dynamics on the local neighborhood block. What I saw and what I heard was heartbreaking in so many ways. And I began to wonder: How can students truly dream when the challenges they face more closely resemble a nightmare?
A seed was planted that would bloom into Todaydream. Todaydream—an organization that connects students with diverse inspiring professionals who share their stories, lessons, and wisdom—responds not only to the difficulties I encountered through my work with CPS, but also to those I discovered through my research on social network discrimination.
After my role at CPS ended, I decided to return to school—to law school, and then to a PhD in economics. I view economics and the law as two powerful tools for addressing some of the same social problems I saw in Chicago and in other areas around the world—from my parents' upbringing overseas to atrocity prevention work at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
And today, I am rooted in Chicago once more—by family and by choice. Growing up, I used to think "education is arming yourself to the teeth" meant arming oneself for oneself—to stave off poverty, or lack of opportunity, or barriers to upward mobility. But now I embrace the power education has had in my life: arming myself in service of others—particularly in response to cascading problems facing our society and world.
Through my research, I uncover and examine the roots of injustice. And then, through my speaking, I share my philosophy—"We Bend It"—that calls on all of us to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.
More Formal Background
Education
Chicago Public Schools — Elementary, middle, and Whitney Young High School alum
Harvard University — Ph.D. in Economics
Committee: Raj Chetty (chair), Lawrence Katz, Isaiah Andrews, Nathan Hendren
Yale Law School — J.D.
Senior Editor, Yale Journal on Regulation
Stanford University — B.A. Economics with Honors
Rhodes Scholar Finalist
Select Experience
- • Todaydream — Founder & CEO
- • White House, Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs — Economics & Legal Fellow
- • U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide) — Tom & Andi Bernstein Human Rights Fellow
- • McKinsey & Company — Management Consultant
- • Chicago Public Schools (2x) — Education Pioneers Fellow & Project Manager, Violence Prevention Initiative