Director, Master's in Development Practice
Associated Faculty, Departments of Anthropology and Environmental Sciences

Carla provides overall leadership on both academic and administrative aspects of the MDP program. Her role includes developing and sustaining strategic partnerships and representing the program in a broad range of settings within and beyond Emory. One of Carla's favorite parts of her job is supporting student engagement on practical learning experiences, such as academic year internships and summer field practicums. She is passionate about promoting students' success, guiding their career strategies and directing them to resources, connections, and opportunities. 

Carla joined Emory in 2010 from the University of Georgia, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences where she worked for 16 years as a Research Scientist with interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research programs funded by federal agencies, such as NSF, NOAA, NASA, and USAID. Carla has served with UNICEF in Nepal and consulted for UNESCO, the World Bank, and the CGIAR international agricultural research centers.

An environmental anthropologist (Binghamton University, 1994), Carla's research draw upon political ecology and political economy to understand how farmers engage different ways of knowing - including local/indigenous and techno-scientific knowledge - in making agricultural decisions in the face of uncertainty and in building reslience to the impacts of climate change. The Sahelian region of West Africa, and particularly Burkina Faso, has been Carla's primary research site over the last 30 years, in addition to projects in East Africa and in the American South. 

Deeply committed to collaborative processes, Carla has led efforts to strengthen capacities and facilietate institutional partnerships aimed to facilitate knowledge excanges between scientists and stakeholders, from policy makers to grassroots coalitions. Her research findings have informed the development of climate science-based decision support tools and early warning systems for agriculture and natural resource management across Africa and the U.S.

Carla has published extensively in high impact, policy-oriented scholarly journals that focus on the intersection of human and natural systems. She is a contributing author for the Africa Chapters of the 5th and 6th of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and Associate Editor of Weather, Climate, and Society - the social science journal of the American Meteorological Society - after serving two terms as Editor.

Originally from Italy, Carla has traveled to 50 countries and is fluent in English and French in addition to her native Italian. In her free time she enjoys swimming, photography, and tending to her hens (aka "the girls").