Sarah Akyena is an instructor of Economics in the Department of Business and Health Professions at Georgia State University Perimeter College. Additionally, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.Her research interests include labor, public economics, education economics, and development economics. Her research agenda centers on understanding the determinants of labor market disparities and the effects of policies designed to mitigate them. She is particularly interested in the implications of social safety net programs, the unintended impacts of welfare conditionality, and the labor market outcomes of women in response to work-contingent benefits. She is currently working on various projects examining how the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)—a program that supplements the earnings of low- and moderate-income families while encouraging work—shapes occupational choice, job match quality, and workers’ satisfaction. The summary of the findings from her EITC projects is that the program both expands labor supply and shifts workers’ job choices. For single women with less education, the program facilitates access to flexible work but also generates mismatch distortions that lower wages and job satisfaction. The negative effects of mismatch ultimately outweigh the benefits of flexibility, complicating the efficiency case for the EITC.She previously served as a Data Strategy Fellow at Achieve Atlanta and as a Research Associate at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (Atlanta Fed). During her time at the Atlanta Fed, she contributed to economic research papers, focusing on racial disparities in labor market outcomes and the labor supply and distributional effects of tax policies, including the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. She has conducted econometric analysis with large confidential datasets, gaining expertise in managing sensitive data and delivering timely insights to policymakers. At Georgia Policy Labs and Achieve Atlanta, she worked on projects addressing postsecondary education inequality, leading an evaluation of completion grants for low-income students. She holds a Master of Science in Mathematical Science from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Ghana. She is a recipient of the 2024 Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Equity and Inclusion Student Fellowship, the 2024 National Tax Association (NTA) Equity and Inclusion Travel Fellowship, and the 2018 Mastercard Foundation Scholar Award at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in South Africa.