Ruchi Patel is a Ph.D. student in Geography and Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment at Penn State. She is interested in the social-environmental impacts of development and land use policy in Latin America, particularly on rural, low-income, and marginalized communities. Since 2018, Ruchi has worked with nonprofit organizations and other collaborators in El Salvador to understand diverse environmental conservation and development challenges at local, subnational, and national scales. Her current Fulbright-funded research explores the uneven geographies of coastal tourism development in El Salvador. The research uses a mix of ethnographic, survey, and geospatial methods to empirically investigate the impacts of tourism development on local livelihoods, land and resource access, migration, security, and environmental change. Prior to graduate school, Ruchi worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. (2016-2017) and served with the Peace Corps in Paraguay (2013-2015).