Alicia joined the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville in July 2020. She is a Minnesota native with a background in specialty crop marketing research. Her research and extension programs focus on consumer behavior, willingness-to-pay, and perceptions of specialty crops and niche products. She is interested in addressing how people perceive products, interact with them, and the best marketing strategies to add value for customers and businesses alike. She uses eye-tracking technologies and applied economics to generate actionable insights based on these topics of interest. Her current research topics include plant benefit information, native plant perceptions, alternative pest control methods, ecommerce, point-of-sale information, labor, and the economy.