Katya Bigman

Katya is a Stanford undergraduate studying International Relations and Management Science and Engineering. Her honors thesis examines why Russia’s 1990s privatization produced politically contingent rather than legally secure property rights, and what that failure implies for institutional reform in weak states. She leads the Hoover Institution’s Capital Frontiers Emerging Markets Working Group Risk Team and serves as Co-President of Women in National Security at Stanford. She has analyzed emerging markets across equity and sovereign debt at Access Industries and Bracebridge Capital. This summer, she is conducting fieldwork in Kazakhstan on privatization-era property rights in the coal sector. She speaks native Russian, fluent Spanish, and working Ukrainian and French.