What Would You Fight For?

Chengcheng Zhai remembers her first elementary school in rural Inner Mongolia in North China. The school had no running water, no indoor bathrooms. Outside, stone slab latrines stood waiting, even in the cold winter months. The students spent a portion of each school day collecting and boiling water.

During elementary school, Zhai’s family moved to Beijing. Her new school had faucets with hot and cold water, ready on demand. The change shocked her.

“That inequality in resource allocation is something that I really remembered from childhood. So when I decided to go to graduate school, I knew that that was the kind of question I wanted to address,” she said.

Zhai is now an assistant professor of information technology, analytics, and operations at the Mendoza College of Business. Her focus is in humanitarian operations, especially in development programs. For many years, that has meant looking at how to improve access to drinking water, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

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