Adam was previously the executive director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford, a senior researcher at Mercy Corps, and a consultant for the World Bank, USAID, and the State Department. He is the author of Guilt by Location: Forced Displacement and Population Sorting in Civil Wars, and his research on forced migration, development, conflict, and evidence-based interventions has been published in International Organization, the British Journal of Political Science, Political Geography, and Economics & Politics, along with the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and The Conversation. Adam completed his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and has conducted field research in 11 countries.