Ep. 6 Food Access and Policymaking, Lauren Chenarides, Arizona State

Join Suzan and ASU's Lauren Chenarides as they discuss food access and policymaking, and what can help us lead from a place of connection.


January 2023
ExecU Podcast
Episode 6:  Food Access and Policymaking with Lauren Chenarides, Arizona State University

BRIEF SUMMARY OF EPISODE

Lauren Chenarides is an Assistant Professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. She holds an undergraduate degree from the College of the Holy Cross, where she majored in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural, Environmental, and Regional Economics from Pennsylvania State University, where she graduated in 2017. 

Her research background is in food economics, studying the nexus between food choice, retailer competition, and public policy. Lauren’s research focuses on understanding barriers to accessing affordable, healthy foods and the consequences of poor food access on consumer spending, diet, and health; analyzing trends and developments in food retailer competition, market concentration, and marketing strategies; and, examining the impact of entry by non-traditional food retailers on local competition. 

Make sure to subscribe to the ExecU Podcast to learn from the most forward-thinking business professors about how to build a better future. 

KEY TAKEAWAY

 “Organizations and the environments in which people are working change over time. What leadership means to me is curiosity, inclusivity, and connection. And connection with who it is we're trying to serve and we're working with.

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Lauren’s LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenchenarides/

Lauren’s FastCompany article:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90780087/are-dollar-stores-the-villains-theyve-been-made-out-to-be

Sponsored by Viv Higher Ed: 

https://vivhied.com/

Transcript

Lauren: 0:00

Where I was then was that, "Oh, we can solve this problem," -- even solving a problem on food access -- I try not to ever use those words in a complete sentence because food access now I realize is not necessarily something we can solve because I now understand from my economics background that food markets are a place where consumers and suppliers interact. welcome to Exec You, the podcast bringing you actionable insights from faculty at the world's top business schools. I'm your host, Suzanne Brinker, and today I'm sharing a conversation with Lauren Janita, who is at Arizona State University in the Carey School of Business. And the topic we'll be discussing is food access and policy making.

Suzan: 0:49

How long have you been at ASU now?

Lauren: 0:51

I started August of 2017. Five years. Oh, five years. Five years. Yeah. I just celebrated my five year anniversary in about a

Suzan: 1:02

month ago. Wow. ASU is such an interesting institution, right? Like for those of us who've been in higher ed for a while, it's been on the radar. It's innovative. It's pushing the envelope of what it means to be a university and a public university in the 21st century. Was this the type of institution that you were hoping to land at?

Lauren: 1:23

I completely agree with you. ASU is is quite a, an amazing place. One thing that we will never. Stop hearing about is how innovative we are. For good reason. I think this is the eighth year we've been ranked the most innovative institution in the country and for, again, for a lot of reasons. When I joined, I don't think I had a full concept. Scope of what that actually meant until I started working here. And of course, the innovation coming from Penn State, innovation to me came in a lot of forms what the research was doing. Because that was my touchpoint there, being in a PhD program. But then coming here, it's just, it's so comprehensive and not just how researchers conducted on research, but in teaching, in scholarship, in, in outreach, in in the design of the campus. Just so many facets. Second of all too is that, the president, he himself is, he's, he doesn't take things as just, okay, good job. You did this you're achieving this. But he's like, then what? So what Now what's next? He has this what's next approach? And for me, I love that because I'm always thinking about okay, I did this one thing, now what else can I do? So I think that the core values for me at least hit meet the mark for. To be

Suzan: 2:42

here. Yeah. Amazing. I can imagine that it's also a relative unique position that you're in because you have a dual appointment between the business school on the one hand, and then is it the college of agriculture or what is the other appointment

Lauren: 2:56

that you hold? I just have one appointment. I'm in the business school and the department that I'm in is agribusiness. So the business school, WP Carey School of Business. It has, I think, nine. And the traditional ones, accounting, marketing, management, those, and then agribusiness falls within the school of business. And a lot of us in the agribusiness department have backgrounds in very complimentary research fields or PhD fields as what would be in a traditional business school. So economics, marketing, ag, economics the management I think even finance.

Suzan: 3:35

Got it. Before we get into your journey and your research interests would love to hear a little bit about how you have seen ASU and the business school at ASU engage with the wider community. Do you get the sense that it's really a place where business leaders emerging and current business leaders come for insights and advice and inspiration from all over Arizona, maybe even beyond?

Lauren: 4:00

Okay, so this actually relates back to something you asked before. Our president has identified that there's this niche of students of education seekers who are what we often hear of as degree finishers. So a lot of our students, especially in the business school, they started their. Degree programs several years ago ended up working, getting a job in industry and then are coming back to finish their degrees. And I see a lot of that. Yeah. Especially in the business school, especially among my students that I teach, and so much so where we have students across. Age across the age range where I'm, wow. Some of the students in my class have been in their late thirties, mid forties, even fifties, where they've been working in the food sector, the food industry for years at Pepsi or at some of these big brand name industries and companies. And so it's really interesting because the insight that I get from, I learn from my. I truly do every day or every, the first class of every semester, I'm always telling my students, it's a successful class for me when I learn from you. And I love that the business school really offers a diverse student population. Not just in like standard metrics of diversity, but also just range of experience and life experience. And that, that to me is something that I think we, I see a lot of at the business school in particular. The types of students that we attract and the range of knowledge that they bring from where they are because they're finishing their.

Suzan: 5:43

So take me back to the first couple of moments when you realized that you were really interested in ag economics and what set you on the path to study this field and eventually become a professor teaching it to

Lauren: 5:57

students. It's a long journey, a very Securist journey and actually one that I look back on now and in h. Everything all fits into place. It's quite funny. Let's travel back in time to 2007. So how many, 15 years ago, and I was doing a study abroad program in Greece. I was living in Athens and that summer, I had an internship at the State Department. The US State Department had a pre, has a presence in Athens, and I was serving as a, an intern in their public relations office. And I had a lot of time to read and learn and think about a. Topics that I didn't necessarily get a chance to think about when I was in my schooling. And one of the topics that piqued my interest at the time was around factory farming. And that ultimately means big production facilities that that work on processing meat or, for beef, pork, all these things. And I read about, Concept, this factory farming from different thought leaders at the time, philosophers, people within food industry and the and I became so interested in it that I it led me down this path of what is food, what, how do we get food from farm to table? And by the time I left that internship, came back to the States, finished out my senior year of college. I became really plugged into the eco scene on campus and here I am 20, 21 years old and I think that I can solve the world by, becoming the president of the eco whatever Champion Club at Holy Cross, which is where I was in undergrad and. And then lo and behold, one of my professors saw how passionate I was about this movement towards the improvements in the environment and how what we can do in terms of how our food choices are interrelated with the environment. He saw this in me and he invited me to a professor's book club. And Lauren at 20, 21 years old is super excited because I get to be in a book club with a bunch of professors talking about things that I really enjoy. And, And it turns out that the book club topic was about reading all of Michael Pollen's books and Michael Pollen for those of you who are not familiar, he is a journalist, also a professor at Berkeley. And. Often written about humans interaction with nature. And he's written several books ranging from topics around gardening to food science related topics. And ultimately the core is how can humans coexist with nature and. At the end of this, the spring semester at the end of the book club, we invited Michael Paul to come out and give a, a talk to one of these keynote addresses to the university or to the college, and I was, The student tour guide for him. So I got actually a chance to sit down with him talk to him, ask him a bunch of questions, tell him about how passionate I was about all the things at the time that I, was and actually continue to still be, but. Here I am sitting down at a table in the student union with Michael Pollen, and he turns to me and he says, Warren, we have enough journalists, we have enough chefs, we have enough writers. We need policy makers. And that's what really set me down this course is truly that conversation. And immediately, I, my, my eyes were open, my senses were heightened to understand. What does it mean to be a policy maker? What kind of skill sets are necessary to be a policy maker who interacts with stakeholders who are involved in the policy making arena? Just the whole, this whole. Pandora's box was open at this point, and so it started from 2008 till 2017 when I got my PhD. That, that whole time, that of, nine years or so, was really looking into how could I use my skill sets? I, I studied math. How do I go from math, a math background into ag economics, but as it turns, One of my professors from Holy Cross, one of my math professors, when I talked to her about some of the things I had been interested in, she pointed me to a couple of programs on ag and resource economics. And when I actually looked into the coursework and what some of these professors were researching, it really aligned with what I was interested in in terms of studying food. Looking at barriers that households face to accessing healthy foods, what impacts food choice? And then thinking about how I might add to that conversation. So that's a, there's so much more involved in that story between even between 2008 and 2017, but really it went all the way back to under.

Suzan: 11:06

It just goes to show how big of an impact one conversation can have when somebody is willing to be a mentor and to take a young person seriously and see the potential in them. So that's really amazing now that you look back, you. Now five years out from getting your PhD from Penn State and Ag economics, which was a decision that was directly driven by that conversation with Michael Paul in 2007. You said

Lauren: 11:32

2008

Suzan: 11:33

at that point thousand eight. Yeah. If you think about the people who are looking at food access and food policy now, How do you think your thinking has evolved beyond maybe what you called maybe a little bit of naive perspective? When you first started out and you thought you could change it all single handedly, which we all do that when we're 21 years old. What do you think has really shifted in you after all this education and all this hands on work that you've done in the.

Lauren: 12:02

Yeah, that's such a good question. So in, in between 2008 and 2017, I lived in New York City before I even went to grad school. And at the time I I had been. Still collecting information about where was I going to find myself situated in terms of this space of the food access, looking at food access from more of a critical lens. And I was volunteering my time at a local food cooperative. And a food cooperative is basically a type of a food retail outlet that is run by members. And this particular food co-op is the fourth. Street food co-op and it's on fourth Street in the Lower East. And it, it couldn't have been more than 20 by 20 feet. It's so small. But what was really great about it is they sourced local foods, healthy foods, and part of my volunteership. In participating in this local food co-op was serving as an attendant at the cash register. One of my first days working there, I I had a patron come and start checking out. And then when they were ready to check out, they handed me a credit card that I had never seen before. He handed it over to me and he said, oh, this is an E B T. So I asked him, what is EBT Says it's electronic benefits transfer card. It's how I receive my food assistance scholars. And I had no I had never heard of this before and I thought, oh my goodness. You, how do you get, what is a food assistance scholar again? What, how old am i? 22, 23 at this point. And I am asking him about it. And it turns out now that I have perspective, understand what this is, this particular customer. Subsidies every month that are directed towards food purchases. And I asked him, why do you shop here? Why don't you shop somewhere else? And he says I really wanna give back to my community. This is my local food co-op. I wanna, it's right down the street from my house. And you guys offer really great food, healthy food items. So at the time I thought, okay, why don't we have more pro or what is it about this program and how are people accessing this? And so at the, again, so at the time, this was my very naive perspective of, and I was still learning all these things, but. Where I was then was that, oh, we can solve this problem, even solving a problem on food access. I try not to ever use those words in a complete sentence because food access now I realize is. Not necessarily something we can solve because I now understand from my economics background that food markets are a place where consumers and suppliers interact. And sometimes it's not profitable for certain places where people can buy. To locate in certain areas and objectively we see this across the United States. We see these areas where there are really a lack of food retail outlets, traditional ones like grocery stores or supermarkets. We just. Can look at that, that there's no reason why a supermarket would locate in the middle of a rural community where there's zero population. There's no demand to support it. But understanding some of the more nuanced mechanisms of what would drive retailer profitability is, has really. Then a major change in how I view this concept or this element of food security, of being able to achieve food security via food access, and understanding what food access is all

Suzan: 15:42

about. executive. The podcast is sponsored by ViiV Higher Education, a full service marketing agency and enrollment strategy consulting firm for colleges and universities. ViiV is passionate about executive education and lifelong learning. Today's episode is brought to you in collaboration with the Arizona State University Carey School of Business. The term food desert comes to mind, which I don't know if you use that or if it's a term that you try to stay away from. It's something that I was just always confronted with when I lived in. Downtown Milwaukee attending graduate school. And the zip code that Marquette University is in is very there are not a lot of traditional supermarkets present it. It's more the convenience stores and then the gas stations and a very socioeconomically challenged population outside of the Marquette campus. And so I remember. Finding that very troubling to see. So even, if I was a student at the time and thinking I wanna make an impact in that space, what would today's Lauren, tell me about, about that and just help me define the problem and help me understand the best approaches to, and you said there's, the solving the problem language is maybe not the right approach, but what would you tell me?

Lauren: 17:00

So the term food desert, that is one that I have used even in my own published research. It's a term that I think a lot of people understand or can at least create a visual of what would a food desert look like, even if the person had zero prior knowledge of what that's about. And so where the food desert term is often like the measurement of looking at the socioeconomic status of this particular geographic area, say zip code or census block group or something where it's a geographic unit looking at levels of poverty and then coupling that. An objective measure of how many supermarkets or large grocery stores are occupying that specific zip code or census block group. So objectively speaking, we need these measures because we wanna look at how they change over time, especially when certain policy interventions can. Help to alleviate some of the hardships that consumers face to accessing healthy foods if they find themselves living in a food desert. Because there are certainly other places besides supermarkets and grocery stores to buy foods and convenience stores being $1 stores being another one, and they're and they might be more likely to locate in a food desert, say. That being said, there is a bit of a pushback about whether the quality of the foods offered at those non-traditional food retail outlets or ones that even skirt the gray area of what it, what is a non-traditional food retail outlet. So regarding what is the quality of the food, in terms of the nutritional value of the products that they offer, et c. So there's so many nuances that are baked into that. But and I'll talk about that in a minute, but looking back at where I am now, and if I were to talk to somebody who's just embarking on this this field is just to understand the complexity of the food system as a whole, and that there are so many. There are just so many facets of the food supply chain that really require. Careful understanding regarding input, supplies the labor market in particular areas thinking about distribution and infrastructure to get the food to where it needs to go. And there are certainly bottlenecks across the food supply chain that trickle down to what we see as, oh, a store's not located here. And it's not just okay, One size fits all solution. It might be something that in certain regions some approach might be different than what we might approach in a separate region.

Suzan: 19:43

What type of data do you work with and what key insights are you seeing across the data that you're working with now as you continue to build your research as a faculty member?

Lauren: 19:55

So most of my data I work with a lot of data, and that's a really, you have identified my one of my passions in what I do. I feel very strongly about having data, building evidence, using data that's collected by agencies and organizations. I feel very strongly about using that effectively. To. Build evidence so that we can very objectively look at policy questions within food and agriculture. And particularly for me, my goal really is to make improvements in data infrastructure. Which I believe is necessary to address these very important persistent questions that we're asking ourselves around food access. Which, 15 years later we're still asking the same questions that I was curious about before. So the. Majority of the data that I use is collected by other organizations. So I would call that secondary data. I do collect my own data through surveys and things like that for some of my research, but predominantly the data that I use come in the form of scanner data, which is basically u UPC items or products with barcodes households and retailers will collect information. The sales of that and the purchases of those particular foods and these. They scanner data, look at purchasing behaviors of households across the United States, and they look at sales and transactions by by retail outlets across the United States. And what I. Look at our within certain regions, how might specific policy interventions say the enter subsidizing a new store to enter a specific region? How might that affect consumers composition of their basket? Say if a new supermarket opens in an area, one, are people going to start shopping, there, or two, if they do start shopping there how might their market baskets change? Another set of data that I work with, which is very much complimentary to the scanner data are it's retail census data. So I look at data that's collected every year that covers the landscape of the food retail environment at the establishment level. And I look to see. How the food retail environment has changed over time, and that's one of my favorite data sets to work with because oftentimes when we look at the food retail environment, we ne don't necessarily see a lot of. Significant changes from one year to the next. We often see changes over the maybe longer term or longer horizon. And one of the most recent projects that I've been working on is looking at Dollar store expansion, and I am able to look at dollar store expansion over time. Through using this retail census data and uh, able to track, which regions are dollar stores locating, cuz it's all related, it's all going, it's all related to this food access idea. And my thought is that dollar stores are potentially a very important emerging player in the food retail space because they are able to locate in areas where supermarkets don't find it profitable and, They could be a market solution to this perennial question of how can we serve consumers in areas that are perhaps more economically vulnerable and dollar stores. A way that households do shop for food, and we've seen this in a lot of the complimentary research that is done interview. Local consumers and certain populations where customers really rely on dollar stores to, to get their food. So I'm able to look at those sorts of questions through both this retail census data and the retail and consumer scanner data

Suzan: 24:02

data. That's really fascinating. So you discovered In the data that you've been working with, that dollar stores have a specific place in solving the puzzle of food access across the United States. And you are, you've been able to identify, how dollar stores can really add to that and how dollar can coexist with supermarkets and. Food retailers to really make sure that food accesses it as wide as it possibly can be. I wonder what 2008 Lauren would've said, about that idea. Do you have any thoughts on that? Probably

Lauren: 24:40

at that point I don't, I think the only experience or interaction I had with dollar stores. Memories from when I was a kid at, where my parents would take us to the local Italian restaurant and then while we were waiting for our reservation, we'd go next door and get some trinkets. I never thought that dollar stores were going to be a part of my research program going forward, or even at the time. Think about it the closest interaction. Or the kind of the first point where I thought dollar stores could potentially be important was back in I think it was 2015 and I was on vacation down in the outer banks in North Carolina. And what's interesting about the Outer Banks is it's a very popular vacation destination. And what's great about the outer banks is it's proximity to the ocean. It's got a lot of nice property to, to enjoy being out in nature and things. And one thing. That, or actually there's two things about the Outer banks is one the, there are not very many supermarkets in the outer banks. And I came to know that firsthand because by the time I showed up at the place that I was staying on the outer banks, and it was time for dinner, and we realized, oh, we have to go out and get groceries and saw that the nearest grocery store was 35 miles away or 35 minutes. We immediately went to plan B. And Plan B was the local dollar store. So we were able to actually get the food that we needed to cook dinner that night, which actually turned out to be something like tacos or something and it was great. And we had a great meal, whatnot.

Suzan: 26:19

And many people might not even realize that dollar stores carry food is, that's something that you found that's not necessarily a well known.

Lauren: 26:28

I haven't looked into it that closely with people's perception of the food products, cuz mostly what I'm looking at right now with dollar stores is the using the scanner data, which actually looks at what people are buying the perceived assortment or the perceived amount, the perceived inventory of dollar stores would have to be done using different data. Through some kind of interview or survey process. And there's so much emerging literature and so many emerging studies that are being done in this space. So I, I don't, I wouldn't be surprised if someone's looking at that. Which then brings me to my second point on the, on kind of the data aspect of all this, is that if I were to have looked. The outer banks and objectively speaking, looking at the data it would be identified as what you said about Marquette University, the zip code. It was a food desert because objectively the, if you look at the local population the average income. The portion of the population that falls below a certain a poverty, a certain income threshold, they, they meet this poverty requirement of what it takes to be a food desert. They meet that criteria. And I also don't have a supermarket. So one would think, oh, okay, it's a vacation home. It's a vacation town, so why would that be called the food editor? So it's just it's such an interesting example of how a dollar store. Really to me was I didn't think any sort of, I didn't have any sort of negative connotation from it. It was just, oh, that happens to be there. Let me see if I can get something that I need there. And it turns out that I could, and when I took the data to it, there are a lot of other places that fit that same that same characteristic. And it turns out that, Dollar stores can be anecdotally and through some of the work that we've done, they can serve the food meets for particular

Suzan: 28:13

customers. I think there's a lesson in that when you're talking to Current and emerging leaders who want to impact a problem, but who maybe haven't necessarily studied all the data and haven't looked at all the different pieces of the puzzle, but are ready to act and want to, want to impact that right away., you, having spent 15 years now studying this and having arrived. Dollar stores as a viable alternative to smother, much more well recognized. Food access points is one of those examples where you're like, you're someone who's actually. Spent a lot of time studying this and who has something new to add. And to that end, you've recently published on this topic as well, right?, what kind of discussions have you had with your readers? And maybe give an overview of what you've published and where and what's come out of that in terms of conversation too.

Lauren: 29:05

Yeah. So to, to your first point, I think it's important to just expect to be surprised all the time that going into a research. Project with some kind of expectation of what you're gonna find is never a good approach. At least that's not approach that I encourage for myself. And for, for even any emerging. Scholar in who's interested in studying this problem or really any problem. So just just be surprised, open minded. Go into it with curiosity, and it can be very challenging to do that when we're inundated by all these very opinionated pieces that may taint our perspective going into a. Project or looking at a specific thing, especially when we look at a, something like food access when we all want people to have access to food, and that's, I think that's a universal truth, that we want to ensure that all people have access to. Safe, affordable, acceptable food so that individuals can lead healthy and active lifestyles. So it's something that we all, I think we all can agree on. Now with respect to this particular research on dollar stores the media was hot on dollar store expansion from about 2017, 2000 maybe 18, 19. I started collecting a bunch of news articles on dollar stores and and the prevailing. Was that dollar stores are bad. They're entering these rural communities. They're kicking mom and pop shops out of business. And it's not just rural, it's also urban areas. And as it turns out, . I think this was probably several years ago now, maybe four years ago, was the earliest policy where they were imposing dispersal policies or they were imposing regulations that would restrict entry of new dollar stores. And I found it interesting because I, when I look to the literature, which I hope that literature and research informs policy making, that's an important feature, I believe, important relationship that we should all aspire to. But I looked at the literature and I hadn't seen any published research bar, one or two studies that were done in a very local level that really looked at a data driven, using a data driven study to determine if. Dollar store entry was doing all the things that these media sources were planning to do and and inspiring these municipals to municipalities to enact these entry bands. And it turns out I, I didn't, like I said, I only found those two studies. So I really set out on this course to. Determine or to look via a data driven study to evaluate whether dollar stores were cannibalizing local food markets, and looking at other implications of dollar store entry. And we've seen. Non-traditional retail outlets, specifically start selling food items. We've seen this in the past. We've seen it with Walmart, we've seen it with the Costco and Sam's Club. So the club stores. And we've seen it with other low assortment or low variety stores like Aldi and Weedle. So we've seen this. Dollar stores are not anything necessarily new. It's the only thing that's new about it is that it's a different format that's entering. Competitive landscape, so in order. Evaluate this question of the relationship between dollar storage expansion and local food market, cannibalization or whatnot, was going to require integrating multiple data sets using proper techniques in geospatial econometrics. Looking at other analytical frameworks to to use that data to understand those relationships. So after two studies that we did we found that restrictive policies may actually end up hurting the most economically vulnerable communities, which then suggests that these entry. Could have unintended consequences in very meaningful ways. And this is just one example of the type of work that I do. And in my research program that has helped people see something that wasn't necessarily apparent without the appropriate analytical framework and knowledge of data resources. And we wouldn't have come to these. As quickly or as confidently without access to that data and to those methods.

Suzan: 33:47

And that's exactly it, right? The unintended consequences that come about when somebody with really good intention sets out to solve a problem, but doesn't necessarily consult experienced members of that research community or of that policy community and isn't willing to really study the data and look at all sides of a situation. And I think when we're talking. From the perspective of business education and leadership and executive education, there are some really valuable lessons in your stories that you just told. Back to my question about publication. You recently published I think not just in academic journals, but also in other publications about food access and dollar stores. Can you talk a little bit about what you have published recently?

Lauren: 34:34

So I recently published this article in Fast Company and it was really interesting to see the discussion that was generated from this particular publication, which is very much linked to my Dollar store work and also with how they fit into this broader. Broader conversation about food access and the discussion, the feedback that I got was, oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way. And people are thinking, or the response that I got and the comments that I got were, these were a lot of the questions I had asked myself, but I never was able to answer. Thank you. And that's really, that's, it's really nice to. Be able to provide another side of the coin. The other, another opinion about data is supported by data about what. These very top of mind media centric conversations can, are focusing on and particularly related to my

Suzan: 35:40

research. Absolutely. And the more media focus there is on something, the more people there are with opinions, but also people who are anxious to make an impact. And. I think you're illustrating how important it is to partner and to research before taking action, because otherwise unintended consequences could cause harm. That is very much unintended. And my, my next question is too, you have done this research on dollar stores. It's really changed your perspectives. Something that you couldn't have predicted back when you started out. What is another big question that you're constantly grappling with right now that you really want to still answer and why is it so important to you?

Lauren: 36:18

Yeah, that's such a great question. Because my whole holistically, my research and my, the area in which I find myself continuing to publish in is really in food security and alleviating food insecurity. Moving toward a greater portion of our population, having access, like I said, to affordable foods, I guess the types of foods that are acceptable for various populations so they can lead active and healthy lifestyles. And there are so many questions within that. But the way that I, I think I'll answer this is slightly different. The, rather than a key question that I'm looking to answer, it's really focusing on building evidence and working more towards building data infrastructure that's necessary to address those food and agricultural policy issues related to food security. And in, in doing so, the. Very tangential related questions relate to some of the big topics right now that are pressing for business leaders like inflation dealing with supply chain issues the supply chain change disruptions, climate change, and all these things, and with improvements in data infrastructure. We can create the type of data set that's integrating the types of data set's necessary to look at how seemingly, maybe not so seemingly unrelated, but maybe more degrees of separation. How does climate change impact food prices or how does climate change impact labor markets? These are some things that people are doing and that there can be a lot more perspectives included in the conversation when we know how to integrate data sets that maybe. Applied agronomists are collecting with necessarily talk to each other, but we can start to integrate these data. So that we can expand the viewpoints that we can present to necessary governments and policy makers, because we're, what I do is, as an economist, as an agricultural economist, is provide insights, and I hope those insights are credible so that they can lead to impacting the, this very important topic of food security. So again, Building this making improvements in data infrastructure is really the one of my, one of the things I'm most passionate about right now. And, I've done several studies that demonstrate the value of integrating data and how that has shaped different people's opinions of what they might have thought going into it. So if that's really the core of what I'm doing, then then I'd like to extend that into other aspects and other questions within the food and agricultural policy space.

Suzan: 39:11

It's just so interesting to me because, my mind immediately goes to, you've added this piece of the puzzle. What next piece do you wanna add? But it seems like also too, you've discovered a methodology for creating good policy decisions that you would like to apply to, not just, not personally, but you would really like to. See being applied across the policy making community and the research community, you know, to solve other really big problems. And that's really cool. For people who are, whether it be in, in corporate settings or in research settings or in policy making settings who are interested in being trained, or influenced towards better data practices and data integration. What would you tell them to look into maybe opportunities that exist currently at ASU and at the school's business at ASU that they could pursue? Yeah.

Lauren: 40:01

You so well said, Suzanne. So well said. And yeah, having this methodology applied into other contexts is really the core nugget of it all. The regarding training. I think that's such an important part of the next generation of these movers and shakers and people who are working in the field in the business context to to really think about the next newer solutions more innovative solutions to some of these broad questions.

Suzan: 40:33

So if you are thinking about audiences who might be listening, who feel really inspired, to take what they have learned about the importance of data integration and making sure that there is a collaborative approach to, to, to affecting really big problems that exist in our world and they want to get training on how to do that better and whether they're working at a company or in a research setting or in a policy making environment. If you're looking at what's possible at ASU and the type of training that people could get there, what would you highlight?

Lauren: 41:04

So in terms of our exec education or education, that's not necessarily linked with a specific degree program. ASU and the WP Carey School of Business, we have several types of offerings. So we can offer perspective students in-person options, hybrid options, online options. And what's great about all these programs is they offer different levels of customization and practical applications. So actually using data, working with professors and other faculty in the college to apply real data to some of the questions that are most likely to impact their businesses. One of the things that came out of the, in a discussion from this Dollar store project was looking. Partnering with businesses to create policy documents or I think it was almost like policy papers because these uh, food and agricultural policies are at the federal level. They're at the state level. They're at the local level so, Working with a faculty member like myself or somebody who's doing the research using these methods applied to some of these questions can be quite valuable to serve as a business and government relations liaison or some kind of business and government relations consultant. Who can really navigate these policy documents, and turn that language into aligned action for businesses. And we've got several upcoming major food and agricultural policy decisions regarding the inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, the 2023 Farm bill. And then also there's an upcoming White House conference on I think it's Health, nutrition, and Hunger. So that's the other thing I wanna say is that it might not be possible timewise, other constraints might be there, but I myself am. Always eager to work with businesses and policy because this cohesive and a very intricate relationship that we can foster and create is really important to look at cross sector synergies.

Suzan: 43:14

It was a pleasure having you as, uh, one of our podcast guests and uh, we are so grateful for your time. What does leadership mean to you?

Lauren: 43:23

What leadership means to me is curiosity, inclusivity, and connection. And connection with who it is. We're trying to serve and we're working

Suzan: 43:36

with. Thank you so much for being with us.

Lauren: 43:40

Thank you, Suzanne. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for listening to Exec You, the podcast sponsored by ViiV Higher Education. We hope you learn something that will help you grow as a leader. Please don't forget to share this episode with your network and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes.