Interim Executive Director
Dr. Ahmed Rachid (AR) El-Khattabi is the (Interim Executive Director) and Associate Director for research and data at the UNC Environmental Finance Center (UNC EFC). In this role, he oversees the production of financial sustainability tools and dashboards, the research design of applied research projects, and UNC EFC’s data management. Dr. El-Khattabi is currently serving as UNC EFC’s interim Executive Director. He has dedicated his life’s work to environmental issues since 2016 and work on a variety of topics in the water sector, including sustainability, resilience, demand management, affordability, innovation, workforce development, non-market valuation, regionalization, among others.
Before joining UNC EFC, he was an ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow and then an Economist in the Water Economics Center at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water. At the EPA, he co-developed an environmental justice batch screening tool (EJSCREENbatch), contributed to the development of support tools for regulatory benefits analyses, and conducted research to support national rulemaking related to Waters of the United States.
Education
Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, 2020, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MS, Economics, 2016, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MS, Economic Policy, 2013, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
BA, Economics, 2010, Stanford University
BS, Biology, 2010, Stanford University