Lena Shadow grew up in Houston Texas and received her Bachelors in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. During this time, she dedicated herself to an original research project investigating the relationship between police legitimacy, civil society group legitimacy, and gender-based violence reporting rates in South Africa. Her primary interest lies in the monitoring and evaluation of gender equality policies and women’s empowerment programs. She’s excited to continue working directly with civil society groups to tackle women’s social issues through policy during her time with Sanford. She also enjoys learning about other policy fields. In the summer before beginning at Duke, Lena worked as a research intern alongside the Pranava Institue to develop a “practitioners playbook” for the deployment of Ethical AI policies in India’s Public Sector. In her free time, Lena loves lifting at her local gym, dancing with her Afro-beats group, and any thrift deal she can find.