Kirsten Spainhower has a Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Studies from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and Masters in Forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She works with the Development Marketplace, a competitive grant program that identifies and funds innovative, early-stage development projects with high potential for development impact and replication. The program is administered by the World Bank Institute and funded by various partners.

She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin where she was posted to an International Institute of Tropical Agriculture station responsible for working with farmers to incorporate trees into their agricultural systems. She has also worked with a number of USAID contractors and completed long-term assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her technical interests include community-based natural resource management, eco-agriculture, agroforestry, communications and monitoring & evaluation. Kirsten enjoys thinking about patterns in nature and studying farming systems from around the world.