Lauren Parnell Marino is pursuing a PhD in Development at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her focuses on women's labor force participation and empowerment in Uganda. She previously worked at Ashoka Changemakers in Washington DC, where she connected social innovators from around the world with funding from companies and foundations interested in tackling a variety of global problems. Lauren is a 2010 Mitchell Scholar. She received a Master's degree in Gender, Globalization and Rights from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Interested in the link between female participation in formal employment and empowerment, Lauren's thesis research examined the quality of health decisions made by Ugandan women whose work connected them to global commodity supply chains. Studying in Ireland gave Lauren her first opportunity to examine gender in an academic setting and reinforced her desire to make gender a focus of her professional career. Long-term she would like to have a management role within a non-profit at the early stages of development so she could help the organization build momentum and scale up in order to effectively influence the widest possible audience. Lauren obtained her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.

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