Brook Lautenslager

Brook Lautenslager is the Deputy Director for Data Analytics and Technology Solutions of the Policy Analysis Unit at AidData. She plays an essential role in working with internal team members and external funders to design and deliver customized technical solutions that solve problems, surface insights, improve efficiency, and add value to AidData's research and data products.

Brook works with the Chinese Development Finance, Listening to Leaders, Sustainable Development Intelligence, and Transparent Development Footprints programs to develop dashboards, internal websites, and decision support tools, as well as implementing solutions to efficiently collect data from various sources. She has automated coding of financial flows for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); led the design and development of high-quality, interactive dashboards for AidData's China’s Public Diplomacy data; and piloted a process to web scrape vast amounts of social media data and articles from countless domestic media outlets across the Europe & Eurasia region. She has also ensured the smooth functioning of TUFF (Tracking Underreported Financial Flows) internal, an in-house data collection website for the Chinese Development Finance Program team, and helped transfer our Listening to Leader sampling frames containing tens of thousands of contacts from Google sheets to an SQL database.

Expertise

Full stack development, SQL and NoSQL databases, Test-driven development, Agile methodologies