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Talia Gillis has such a calm, friendly presence you’d never guess that she’s undertaking two doctoral programs while pregnant with twins and running around after a toddler at home.

“Did I underestimate the amount of work it would take?” she asked rhetorically. “Yes, probably. But it has been fantastic.”

Gillis recognizes that she’s an outlier. “It’s not very common for women to have kids in the economics graduate program, and two is odd, but three is kind of crazy,” she said in early February. “It took a long time to reconcile my self-concern as a graduate student and the fact that I was going to have twins, but a lot of people have been very supportive.”

Born in London, Gillis moved with her family to Australia when she was an infant, and then to Israel when she was around 8. It was at Israel’s Hebrew University that she first studied law and economics as an undergraduate, before moving to Oxford for a graduate law degree. She then came to Harvard six years ago to get an S.J.D. in law and economics, deciding soon after to add a Ph.D. in business economics with a focus on household finance and behavioral economics.

He said to his Dad “I didn’t hug her because she said no, but I told her I liked her sweater!” And his dad said “Cool buddy!” And they went on with their shopping trip.