Bethanie Saint Louis

Bethanie Saint Louis is a first-year doctoral student at the Brown School whose upbringing in Haiti shaped her commitment to poverty reduction and community-driven development. She brings a background of graduate education and over a decade of professional experience spanning international development and social work. Her research examines how community asset building and participatory, locally driven approaches can reduce poverty and mitigate aid dependency in developing nations. She is particularly interested in how public policy and high-level initiatives within the U.S. government and the international development sector can support sustainable, locally led solutions. Through her scholarship, Bethanie aims to inform international social work policy and practice that creates lasting, community-owned change.