Marija is a senior policy analyst in the Research and Communications unit of the Regional & Community Outreach Department, where she conducts mixed-methods research to help inform public policy and practices. For the decade before she joined the Bank in 2017, Marija worked at the nexus of applied research and community engagement on issues of poverty alleviation, housing stability and homelessness, economic mobility, and discrimination, with a focus on low/moderate-income and historically marginalized communities—both domestically and internationally.

Marija earned her PhD from the McCormack Graduate School of Global and Policy Studies at UMASS Boston, where her dissertation focused on labor market discrimination of Roma people in Serbia. She is a recipient of the 2020 Janet L. Yellen Award given for excellence in community development in the Federal Reserve System.