Dean S KarlanDean Karlan is Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern Universityand President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). Dean startedIPA in 2002 with two aims: to help learn what works and what does not in thefight agains poverty and other social problems around the world, and then toimplement successful ideas at scale. IPA has worked in over 50 countries, with1,000 employees around the world. Dean's personal research focuses on usingfield experiments to learn more about the effectiveness of financial servicesfor low-income households, with a focus on using behavioral economicsapproaches to improve financial prod-ucts and services. His research includesrelated areas, such as building income for those in extreme poverty, charitablefund-raising, voting, health, and education. Dean is also cofounder ofstickK.com, a start-up that helps people use commitment contracts to achievepersonal goals, such as losing weight or completing a problem set on time, andin 2015 he founded ImpactMatters, an organization that helps assess whetherchari-table organizations are using and producing appropriate evi-dence ofimpact. Dean is a Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and anExecutive Committee member of the Board of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty ActionLab. In 2007 he was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientistsand Engineers. He is coeditor of the Journal of Development Economics andon the editorial board of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Heholds a BA from University of Virginia, an MPP and MBA from University ofChicago, and a PhD in Economics from MIT. In 2016 he coauthored Fail-ing inthe Field, and in 2011 he coauthored More Than Good Intentions: Improving the Ways the World's Poor Borrow, Save, Farm, Learn, and StayHealthy.