Smith-Heisters is an interdisciplinary researcher affiliated with Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions at Arizona State University. At ASU, she trained in multi-method qualitative institutional analysis in the tradition of the Ostrom Workshop. Her research supports collaboration, decision making, and organizational learning through assessment of formal policy interventions and informal norms- and rules-based adaptive behaviors in complex governance systems. In her doctoral research, Smith-Heisters investigated operational decision making in large-scale irrigation infrastructure systems.