Kalina Staub is originally from Texas, where she received a BA in French and Economics from the University of Texas at Austin before moving to the great state of North Carolina to pursue graduate studies at Duke University. Before coming to UNC, she was a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Kalina is an applied microeconomist whose research has focused on marriage formation and dissolution in the US. More recently, she has become interested in exploring effective teaching strategies in the economics classroom.