Michelle Poulin is the Executive Director of the Berkeley Population Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a social demographer with research interests that include fertility, mortality, gender and households, and economic life and development. She further investigates cultural meaning, people’s everyday lives, and the institutions that shape them. Poulin’s research has focused on demographic processes, particularly the events that unfold during the transition toward becoming an adult, such as leaving school, getting married or forming a first union, or having a first child, and how these processes differ and change across time and space. She employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, with a concentration in sub-Saharan Africa and, more recently, Bangladesh. Prior to her current role, she was a Sociologist at the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, Africa Region. Her training is from Boston University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania.