She works on economic development, with a specific focus on gender. Her recent work focuses on the local welfare effects of natural resource extraction in Africa, where she explores how mining investments affect employment inequality, women’s empowerment, and health. She teaches Development Economics and Women in Development Economics at Barnard. Tolonen is an affiliated faculty member at Columbia Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP) and external research member at Oxford Center for Analysis of Resource Rich Economies. UNESCO has funded her research and she has consultancy experience from the World Bank. She received her Ph.D. from University of Gothenburg in 2015 and was previously a visiting researcher at University of Oxford and University of California at Berkeley.