Elsa Ransom received her BA in political science and Russian studies from UCLA and her MA in Russian and Central Asian studies from Harvard. She has lived in St. Petersburg, Russia as an English teacher and Tashkent, Uzbekistan where she conducted research on water resource management. Prior to joining the SSRC, Elsa worked at the Open Society Institute on a fellowship program that brought students from the former Soviet Union to the United States for graduate studies. At the SSRC she worked on the International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) and the Inter-American Foundation Research Fellowship (IAF) programs until their close.