From an early age, Misty Heggeness has been obsessed with the way gender shapes economic autonomy. The minute her teenage-self discovered that a long-lost ancestor, Lisbet Nypan, was the second-to-last Norwegian woman burned at the stake in 1670 accused of killing the neighbor's cows, it became impossible for her to ignore the role gender plays in how we interact with the world around us. 

Fast forward to today, Misty is an associate professor of public affairs and economics and founder/co-director of the Kansas Population Center at the University of Kansas. Her expertise on women and the economy is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and Axios, among other outlets. 

Drawing from Taylor Swift as the muse, she has turned her passion for gender, economics, and pop culture into a mind-bending book about how women thrive in today's economy. With an eye to the women of our past, she builds solid arguments for how women show up and reinvent themselves time-and-again as they move through life in a world made for the ease of others.

While she was previously a principal economist and senior advisor at the U.S. Census Bureau, today you can find her writing shorts on Medium and Substack or teaching the economics of pop culture and gender on campus in Lawrence, Kansas.