Ali Monroe is a research associate at the University of Montana at the Center for Population Health Research. She studied economics and uses economic and mathematical models to study social questions such as behavioral responses to wildfire smoke, how preterm birth relates to mental health, and which Montanan communities are most vulnerable to wildfire smoke.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Where are you from?
Originally, I'm from a town called Edmonds, Washington, which is a little bit north of Seattle.
What activities did you participate in when you were young?
I played soccer all growing up. I did some other sports as well, but soccer was always my main one. When it came time to picking college, that was kind of a huge part of my decision. I decided to go out to University of Montana and play soccer there.
What were your role models growing up.
I have one older sister, and she's my role model in a lot of cases. I always wanted to keep up with her and her friends. I got to learn and pay attention when she was doing different math classes.
If I needed to support with studies I could ask her, because she had just, she had also challenged herself with being in math club and doing all these hard math classes as well. Having somebody who has been through and can help you is a major help, especially when they have patience and know how to deal with you as a younger sibling. She was also pretty fearless. As part of a Running Start program, a piece of her classwork was to go out on a boat every week and explore what is out there in the Pacific Northwest. It was a cool experience for her to have, and her leadership helped my own drive, whether it was academics or sports.
I always had somebody to compete with and keep up with, and I think that helped me a lot in the classroom and wanting to push myself and challenge myself in mathematical classes or econ classes or stats classes.
As far as my journey with STEM I give credit to my parents. They had my sister and I work on math books a lot of times over the summer we would have to complete a couple pages before we would get to go play outside or something like that. I feel like that always gave us a good, like foundation or even head start going into that next year.
I also joined Math Olympiad and had a great experience with a generic STEM class where we got to build dragsters out of balsa wood with CO two cartridges on the back. We also got to build these, like little wood blocks and see how they tested under pressure.
How did your interests continue into your higher education journey?
I ended up studying accounting and economics for undergrad, and then for my master's, I did economics. I really enjoyed mathematics which is foundational both of those degrees, though economic theory gets challenging in particular. I'm so grateful that I had a strong background in mathematics growing up. There are such a range of different classes that I could take from environmental economics and sports economics and health economics, and I enjoyed studying these issues that aren’t often mathematical while having a data mindset.
What got you into studying these subjects that don’t usually get a mathematical treatment?
I think it was maybe my freshman or sophomore year that I took that sports economics class. I was an athlete at the time, and I was super fascinated with the backside of it and all that goes into attendance and how mascots even impact revenue. All these different things that you don't think about.
For my thesis, I focused on subjective well-being, which is basically a measure of happiness. And I think that piqued my interest a lot, because now that we have developed nations, we don't necessarily see that more amounts of money equates to more and more amounts of happiness. And so I think that was an interesting thesis for me, just for my own personal life and where I want to spend my time.
The concept of mathematically thinking about what makes people happy is a really cool way to assess the well-being of a country.
What is your pitch to young people, especially girls who are interested in following a career similar to yours?
It's a skill that benefits you, even if you don't end up in that career. Everyone deserves to have a solid foundation in mathematics. It gives you a lot of empowerment to handle your own finances and to be able to plan and budget on your own without needing other people to do that.
When I finished school, I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do. I actually had a job lined up to be in an audit position, but I kind of felt that that wasn't based on based on an internship previously, and I kind of felt like that wasn't what I wanted to do for the time. And so with talking to my professors, seeing what was possible, I was able to start this research position. And from that, I feel like I've been on projects that I knew nothing about to begin with, and I think that that is also it's an uncomfortable feeling to be like, Whoa. I don't feel qualified to be doing this. But that's why, I think that's the nature of research, is you just kind of think. It out along the way, like, what has been done so far? You educate yourself and then be like, Okay, well, what can I contribute? Be curious about things. Start with finding a topic of interest.
What difficulties have you faced as a woman in STEM?
I was quite fortunate in terms of being a woman in STEM because my parents were very supportive. Again, I had a sister who had just previously gone through it and showed me that, ‘yeah, of course, we should be in this classroom.’ There was no shadow of a doubt that girls belong in STEM classrooms.
In seventh grade, my Algebra teacher was a woman. She was a great teacher and a great role model. And then I had a great teacher in high school that was teaching me precalculus, I think all along the way, again, I think there were so many women that had probably faced more challenges than I did.
I was one of five girls in a classroom of 30 but I don't think that I was met with as much resistance as people before me were.
What is up next to you?
I like my job, and am looking forward to playing a lot of soccer over the summer