Originally from Springfield, Missouri, Nancy Fairbank is a senior majoring in Political Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Nancy has dedicated her life to understanding and combating homelessness & poverty. Locally, she has worked with a research group at UT-Dallas to create a drug intervention and prevention and prevention program aimed towards homeless youth, which has been implemented in five Dallas schools. Internationally, she has served as an in-country volunteer in organisations in Kenya and Nicaragua and in December 2016 travelled to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos to conduct research comparing international homelessness and poverty policies. She is a McDermott Scholar and is the author of the 2016 Book entitled “Throwaway Youth: Stories of Springfield’s Homeless Teens”, which chronicles the life stories of five homeless youth in her hometown. In the UK, Nancy will pursue a master’s degree in International Development at the University of Birmingham and a master’s degree in social intervention and policy evaluation from the University of Oxford.