She received her PhD in government from the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching interests include democratization, governance, and public policy in Latin America. Her research focuses on the politics of poverty relief, social sector reform, and human development in Brazil. She is author of Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). Her research has also been published in American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, among other journals. She served as an Americas analyst for Freedom in the World.