Kelly Finke is a Summer Intern with the Sustainable Diets Initiative, where she is working with Stacy Blondin, Food Program Behavioral Research Associate, to develop a Playbook of science-based strategies that help food retailers promote plant-rich products. Her work involves synthesizing insights from consumer research, behavioral science, and psychology and evaluating the feasibility of existing strategies through expert and stakeholder engagement.

Kelly is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, where she is also affiliated with the School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Psychology. As a member of Corina Tarnita’s Complex Adaptive Systems Lab and Elke Weber’s Behavioral Science for Policy Lab, Kelly develops models of population-scale behavior change, with a focus on enabling transitions to more sustainable lifestyles and societies. Her research informs integrative strategies that address structural, social, and psychological drivers of deeply entrenched behaviors such as diet, transportation, and energy and material consumption.

As a High Meadows Environmental Institute Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (HMEI-STEP) Fellow, Kelly is committed to translating her research into actionable policy insights. She also leads two interdisciplinary learning cohorts for researchers interested in exploring applications of their work for sustainability and science policy. Kelly holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science and Computational Biology, with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies, from Swarthmore College. Motivated by a fascination with both human and animal societies, Kelly is passionate about protecting and preserving the natural world through a deeper understanding of human behavior and culture.