Graduate Students
Colin West
Management & Organizations
Colin graduated from Harvard College in 2010 with a degree in Social Studies, focusing
on Organizational Behavior. At UCLA his research interests lie at the intersection of social psychology, behavioral economics, and JDM. In particular, he's interested in how low-income households manage volatility and uncertainty in their financial lives.
Colin has a professional background applying behavioral science research in business and policy settings. He worked at BEworks, a Toronto-based consulting firm dedicated to applied behavioral economics. More recently, he worked as a consultant and researcher at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi, Kenya. At Busara, he led several projects exploring how stress and uncertainty influences patterns of savings, spending, and credit decisions amongst people living in severe poverty.
Behavioral Decision Making
David Zimmerman
David graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2014 with a degree in Decision Science and
an additional major in Statistics. He is interested in researching financial decision making
and communicating risk and uncertainty graphically. Specifically, he focuses on simplifying decumulation decisions, disclosing overdraft coverage information, and communicating uncertainty in sequences graphically.
Prior to the PhD program, he worked in the Office of Research at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There he worked on implementing behaviorally inspired interventions
to improve financial outcomes with large financial services companies.
Behavioral Decision Making
Megan Weber
Megan graduated from Georgetown University in 2017 with a degree in Psychology and a minor
in Business Administration. At UCLA, she is interested in research related to JDM, the visualization of data for behavior change, and the application of behavioral insights in public policy, especially in financial, health, and prosocial contexts.
Before beginning the PhD program, Megan worked as a researcher at Ipsos Public Affairs
in Washington, DC, supporting large-scale research programs for the Federal government
and healthcare industry. Her projects at Ipsos included experimental research for the Food
and Drug Administration to guide regulation of prescription drug advertising, patient experience measurement and improvement for the Veterans Health Administration, and qualitative research with the Social Security Administration to test new retirement planning products.
Jonathan Bogard
Behavioral Decision Making
Jon graduated in 2009 from Brown University with a degree in Philosophy (especially focusing
on moral philosophy and epistemology). In the last two years of his undergraduate degree, he developed an interest in moral psychology and JDM. He also worked for two years as a research assistant in Steven Sloman’s Cognitive Science Lab. Jon cares deeply about the world and others, and have spent the last 8 years working in New Orleans’ 9th Ward as a teacher and leader with Teach for America and Collegiate Academies (a charter school network). In that capacity, he tested behaviorally informed educational interventions in the field. He is interested
in JDM and especially applying behavioral insights to addressing social challenges in domains such as education, health, financial decision making, environmental behaviors and charitable giving.