Shelby is an advanced PhD student and Presidential Merit Fellow at Harvard University studying education and political economy in low- and middle-income countries. Her dissertation focuses on the political economy of refugee education.
Shelby has more than a decade of experience in education and development with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. As a consultant she specializes in education, international aid, gender, labor, and conflict and displacement. She has worked with the World Bank for more than five years and has also consulted with the Center for Global Development, the Education Commission, UNICEF, USAID, among others. She holds an MA in Global Policy Studies from UT Austin, where her masters’ thesis on international aid to education earned distinction for outstanding graduate research, and holds an M.Ed in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to joining the World Bank, Shelby taught middle and high school in Texas and completed a Fulbright grant. At Harvard, she has been a teaching fellow for courses in Microeconomics, Statistics, Education and Development, and Education in Armed Conflict as well as a research methods coach for the Harvard Kennedy School. Shelby has field experience in many countries across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Eastern Europe and is highly skilled in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.