MFA Economists: Evaluating Data to Inform Smart Decisions

Our best work happens when we help clients implement solutions that benefit not only the bottom line, but also community, jobs, economic and environmental health.  To that end, we have added four new staff members who form MFA’s economics team and are providing our clients with data and analysis to better understand the impacts of their choices.

Please welcome our new staff members:

• Gretchen Greene, PhD – Principal Economist
• Jeri Sawyer – Senior Economist
• Rabia Ahmed, MS – Senior Economist
• Kerensa Gimre, MPHIL, MS – Environmental Economist

MFA’s economics team specializes in data and analysis to help make decisions and manage risks around the critical topics of resilience and sustainability.  The team has experience in natural resource, energy, agricultural, health, and community economics, and applies economic tools to help clients understand the outcomes of financial and environmental decisions.   A key reason for bringing in this particular group of economists is that they bring expertise in quantifying environmental and social impacts in an economic framework for decision making.  They also provide general economics services for a wide variety of clients including federal, state, tribal, and municipal agencies, as well as private industry and law firms.

The economic team’s services include:

• Water demand and management
• Water rights and supply security
• Water litigation
• Demography and socioeconomics
• Ecosystem service valuation
• Decision analysis with uncertainty
• Survey writing and data analysis
• Regional economic impacts (jobs, income, output)
• Recreation
• Natural resource damage assessment (NRDA)
• Risk perception
• Endangered species economics
• Recycling
• Public infrastructure investment
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Regulatory review
• Stakeholder outreach and facilitation

We asked Dr. Gretchen Greene to explain why she and three other seasoned economists chose to join MFA: “MFA is known for helping clients make smart decisions for planning and engineering solutions.  There is a natural fit with our expertise in supporting and strengthening those decisions with quantified economic information.”

Learn more about MFA’s economic services here.