Haley Nelson is a program officer at the Caspian Policy Center. She is in the second year of her Master's program at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, concentrating on Russia and Eurasia. Her research interests include energy security in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the political economy of the Caucasus, and security issues in Eurasia. Prior to starting her Master's program, she received her B.A. in International Relations and Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Illinois. While at the University of Illinois, she achieved departmental distinction in the REECE program, along with a Boren scholarship and a FLAS scholarship for her Turkish language study.