Luisa Blanco is an Associate Professor of Economics at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. She specializes in development and international economics, with a focus on the Latin American region. Dr. Blanco research interests pertain to the wellbeing of Latin Americans at home and abroad. Blanco is currently a board member at UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research-Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (RCMAR-CHIME), an Adjunct Researcher at RAND Corporation, a Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College at Oxford, and was a Visiting Senior Scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank (2017-2018).  Blanco's funded research projects focus on financial behavior among minorities in the United States. She conducted a community based randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on retirement saving among Hispanics in the Los Angeles area. Blanco also leads the mobile money diary project, which collects data about financial behavior and health among Hispanics in California.  Blanco's research specific to the Latin American region focuses on issues related to economic development and policymaking, such as institutions, crime, capital accumulation, and financial development.  Blanco's work has been published in journals such as the the Journal of Consumer Affairs, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Oxford Development Studies, Southern Economic Journal, and Latin American Research Review.

Rajashri Chakrabarti is a senior economist in Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Her areas of interest include labor economics, consumer finance and economics of education. Her research focuses on credit access and effects on educational investment decisions and future financial and economic outcomes, consumer debt and costs and returns to post-secondary education, unintended consequences of merit-based financial aid and effects of school accountability and alternative school finance systems. Raji is also a research affiliate at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, a fellow at New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, and an affiliate at Columbia University’s Committee on the Economics of Education. She recently served on the board of directors and executive committee of the New York Census Research Data Center and the board of directors of Association for Education Finance and Policy. She is an editorial board member of Education Finance and Policy. Prior to joining the NY Fed, Raji was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Program on Education Policy and Governance. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University.

Professor Cordes has served as Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Public Administration and is a Professor of Economics, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs and co-director of The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center.  He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1977, and joined The George Washington University faculty in 1975. His academic specialization in economics is in the area of public economics and tax policy.  Dr. Cordes was a Brookings Economic Policy fellow in the Office of Tax Policy in the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1980-81, and served as a senior economist on the Treasury's Tax Reform project in 1984.  From 1989 to 1991 he was Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office.  He was a Visiting Fellow at the Urban Institute in 1998-1999, and is currently an Associate Scholar in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute.  Prof. Cordes is the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy (Urban Institute Press, 2005); and co-editor of Nonprofits and Business. He has also authored or co-authored over 40 articles in scholarly journals and contributed over 20 chapters to books and edited volumes.

Donna K. Ginther is the Dean’s Professor of Economics and the Interim Director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research at the University of Kansas and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Her major fields of study are scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality, scientific entrepreneurship, and children’s educational attainments.  Dr. Ginther has published in several journals, including Science, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Demography, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, and the Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association.  She has also received research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.  Her research has been featured in several media outlets including the Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, and the Boston Globe.  Dr. Ginther testified before the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education of the U.S. House of Representatives on the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008.   Dr. Ginther has advised the National Academies of Science, the National Institutes of Health, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on the diversity and future of the scientific workforce.

Lily Hsueh is an assistant professor of Public Policy and Economics at the  School of Public Affairs  in the College of Public Service and Community Solutions at the Arizona State University. Hsueh is also affiliated with the ASU School of Sustainability. Hsueh’s research centers on how economics and politics interact, and how markets, institutions, governments, businesses, and other stakeholders play mediating roles in determining policy effectiveness, shaping the policy process, and affecting policy outcomes.  Her most recent projects have examined the emergence and efficacy of alternative governance systems (i.e., voluntary governance or market-based governance) across different policy issue areas and types of pollution and natural resources, namely global climate change, toxic chemicals, and ocean and marine resources.

Rachel Meltzer is Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Chair of the Public and Urban Policy M.S. degree at the Milano School of Policy, Management and Environment at The New School. Her research is broadly concerned with urban economies and how market and policy forces can shape disparate outcomes across neighborhoods.  She focuses on issues related to housing, land use, economic development and local public finance. Current projects look at how market-based, natural disaster and policy “shocks” impact retail and commercial activity in urban neighborhoods. Dr. Meltzer is also interested in the private provision of public goods, and she has explored a number of questions related to Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), Homeowners Associations (HOAs) and Inclusionary Zoning. She teaches in the core policy analysis curriculum at Milano and is the author of the textbook, Policy Analysis as Problem Solving (Routledge 2018), with Milano colleague, Alex Schwartz.  Dr. Meltzer also teaches classes on quantitative methods, urban economic development and public finance. She earned her doctorate in Public Policy and M.P.A. from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and a B.A. in Psychology and Mathematics from Dartmouth College.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina (UNC), at Chapel Hill. The majority of my research is focused on uncovering the racial and ethnic inequalities in wealth and employment, health, and wellbeing as well as the determinants that undergird them.  Overall, my lived experiences have shaped the lens in which I formulate new research questions, structure my pedagogy, and view economics as a discipline. I believe that the promotion of diversity in higher education begins with strong mentorship by faculty and peers who genuinely understand the challenges faced by students from undeserved and underrepresented communities. As a faulty member at UNC at Chapel Hill, I am committed to fostering diversity in the field of public policy, economics, and the profession at large. I look forward to training and mentoring students at all levels and backgrounds in the pursuits of academic and non-academic careers.

David Slusky researches three areas: 1) access to healthcare (women's health clinic closures lower preventive care and raise the unmarried birth rate, Uber availability lowers ambulances usage rates, and Catholic hospitals have lower tubal ligation rates); 2) infrastructure and environment (the Flint water crisis lowers the birth rate, and sunlight lowers asthma); and 3) insurance (the Medicaid expansion reduces medical divorce and improves health, and eligibility for disability insurance raises disability rates).  He received a B.S. in physics and international studies from Yale University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

Jonathan Smith is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Georgia State University and faculty affiliate with the Georgia Policy Labs.  His research focuses on the behavioral and institutional factors that determine how students transition from high school to college and the consequences of those decisions. Prior to GSU, he worked as a Policy Research Scientist at the College Board. Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston University and a B.A. in economics from Tufts University.  I've been so lucky with mentors and co-authors that I'd like to pay forward some of my good fortune.

Beth Gamse is an experienced evaluation professional with a wide range of substantive and policy interests.  Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she worked at a large contract research firm, designing and leading studies for foundations, federal agencies, and non-profit organizations. She is active in professional organizations (e.g., APPAM, SREE), and enjoys brainstorming and problem-solving.

I have worked in the university, thinktank, consulting and private sector settings and am happy to share my experiences with professionals who are early in their careers. My PhD is in Public Policy Analysis so I am very familiar with the field and the range of opportunities surrounding it. In my current role, I am also close to the trends re-shaping the field and higher education overall.

Patrick J. Wolf is a Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.  He received his doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University in 1995 and previously taught at Columbia and Georgetown.  Wolf mainly leads rigorous longitudinal evaluations of private school voucher programs.  Recently he has focused on the effects of school choice on important non-cognitive student outcomes such as civic values, criminal behavior, and educational attainment.  He has co-authored or co-edited five books and over 180 journal articles, book chapters, and policy reports on education, research methodology, and public management topics.  His most recent book is School Choice: Separating Fact from Fiction (Routledge, 2019).  Wolf has received the Best Article Award of the Academy of Management’s Public and Nonprofit Management Division and the Significant Research Award from the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas.  He has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress five times and before committees of state legislatures 19 times. 

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. My research examines how public policies affect children and families’ health and well-being, especially low-income families. My work has been published in Journal of Health Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Children and Youth Services Review, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Pediatrics, and Maternal and Child Health Journal. I earned my PhD from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in April 2018. I also spent the winter and spring of 2017 as a visiting graduate student scholar at the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, and earned my MPA from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. I am fortunate to have had phenomenal mentors throughout my research training, and I believe all students should have access to such mentorship.

Dr. Dallas J. Elgin is a Senior Research Associate with 2M Research. He holds a PhD in Public Affairs with an emphasis in Public Policy from the University of Colorado’s School of Public Affairs. Dr. Elgin has more than 11 years of professional public policy research experience in the public and private sectors. At 2M, Dr. Elgin’s responsibilities include developing research designs, data collection, utilizing econometric and mixed-methods research methodologies to conduct rigorous evaluations, and summarizing and communicating research findings. Dr. Elgin’s previous experience includes serving as a Senior Researcher at the Colorado Department of Human Services, where he served as the state’s senior expert in internal and contracted program evaluation efforts. In that position, he was responsible for conducting policy and program analyses and evaluations that examined the policy context, implementation, outcomes, and costs of human services programs. Dr. Elgin’s policy-focused research has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including Public Administration, Governance, Public Management Review, and Children and Youth Services Review, among others.

H. Elizabeth Peters, an Institute Fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute, is a labor economist and demographer with more than 30 years of experience in social and family policy research. Her work focuses on social investments in families, children and youth, the role of the family as a social safety net, and the impacts of public policies on father involvement, intergenerational transfers, and work-family balance. Her work has examined the effects of public policies such as divorce laws, child support policy, child care policy, welfare reform and paid family leave.  Before joining Urban, Peters was a professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and is currently a Professor Emerita. She was also the founding director of the Cornell Population Center. From 1993 to 2004, she was a partner in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development–funded Family and Child Well-Being Network, where she directed the network’s fatherhood efforts. She was also a member of the steering committee that guided the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics’ Nurturing Fatherhood initiative. Peters earned her MPP and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.

Sharon Rowser directs MDRC’s California office and serves as deputy director of the Policy Research and Evaluation Department (PRED). She has more than 30 years’ experience in the design, development, and implementation of national demonstrations serving families and children, adolescent dropouts, and other disadvantaged populations. Rowser currently directs MDRC’s work in partnership with Public Strategies on the Office of Family Assistance Training and Technical Assistance for the Healthy Marriage Responsible Fatherhood program and Integrating Innovative Employment and Economic Stability Strategies (IIEESS).  She directed site engagement, development and technical assistance demonstration projects including Parents Fair Share, Supporting Healthy Marriage, Head Start CARES, and the UK Employment Retention and Advancement evaluation. She recently directed site engagement for more than 100 programs participating in MDRC’s two home visiting evaluations, the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) and MIHOPE-Strong Start, and for the 70 site YouthBuild evaluation. Before joining MDRC, Rowser was a program officer in the Ford Foundation’s Urban Poverty program.  Rowser received a BS in management and marketing from Babson College, and an MA in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research.

Matthew Stagner directs Mathematica’s Chicago office. He is a nationally known expert on youth development and risk behaviors, child welfare, teen pregnancy prevention, evaluation design, and the role of research in policymaking.  He is the current president of APPAM and passionate about the career development of the next generation of policy scholars.  His work focuses on policies and programs for vulnerable youth, such as those transitioning out of foster care.  Prior to joining Mathematica, Stagner served as executive director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and as a senior lecturer at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy Studies. Stagner also served as director of the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute and director of the Division of Children and Youth Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).  Among his many professional activities and honors, Stagner is a member of the Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Research Technical Working Group in the Office of Policy Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, DHHS. He has also served as a reviewer for the Children and Youth Services Review, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.  While at HHS, Stagner received the National Partnership for Reinventing Government “Hammer Award” for his help in creating the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, as well as the Commendable Service Award. He holds a Ph.D. from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, and a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Liza Briggs is a civilian Social Scientist at the U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters (USMC HQ) Intelligence department (I Dept.) Insider Threat program (InTP) in Quantico, Virginia.  She has over a decade of experience providing research to support policy makers.  Her prior experience includes work at U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Department of State (DOS), Broadcast Board of Governors (BBG), National Defense University (NDU), non-government and private sector entities.  Dr. Briggs holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from James Madison University, a Master’s degree in Higher Education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a PhD in International Policy Studies from The University of Maryland- College Park. Dr. Briggs has conducted research in over 20 countries.  She is a native English speaker and highly proficient in French.

Jenni Owen is the Director of Strategic Partnerships for North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.  In this role, Owen identifies and launches strategic partnerships between state government, universities/colleges, philanthropy and other entities. Primary goals of the partnerships include capitalizing on external research expertise for positive impact on policy and increasing internal-to-government research capacity.  Owen was previously Policy Director for Governor Cooper, working closely with cabinet agencies and other state, local, and non-governmental partners to inform and act on the Governor’s policy priorities. Prior to joining the Cooper administration in January 2017, she was the Director of Policy Engagement and on the faculty of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She co-directed the Duke University School Research Partnership, was the principal investigator for multiple foundation-funded projects, and served as director of the University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium. In 2007, Owen was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship to South Africa and in 2010 launched DukeEngage Durban (South Africa). Before Duke, Owen was a senior policy advisor to Governor James B. Hunt Jr. and then the planning director for the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. Among other civic roles, she was a commissioner on the North Carolina Indigent Defense Services Commission, is a board member of El Futuro and the Durham Children’s Initiative, and a member of the policy council of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management.

I received my PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research is in health economics, with a focus on the economics of health insurance and Medicaid.  I am currently an associate professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where I am also appointed in the Department of Economics, a Health Policy Research Program Scholar in Department of Health Policy and Management, and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Health Systems & Design. I am a faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Institute for Research on Poverty. I am also a Faculty Research Fellow in the NBER's Health Economics program and an associate editor at the Journal of Health Economics.

Type of Mentoring: Overall Professional Development

Prefer to Mentor: PhD Students

 

Michael Doonan is an associate professor and Director for the Masters of Public Policy Program, Schneider Institute for Health Policy at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. He is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum. His Ph.D. from Brandeis is both in Political Science and Health Services Research. His research and publications focus on issues related to access to health care reform, federalism, Medicaid, federal/state relations, public health and the politics and economics of health system change. He speaks widely on state and national health care reform. He is author of American Federalism in Practice: The Formulation and Implementation of Contemporary Health Policy, published by the Brookings Institute Press in 2013.  Michael worked as program specialist for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in the area of Medicaid managed care and state health care reform. He served as a member of President Clinton's Health Care Taskforce working primarily on the Low-Income and Working Families work group, and as a member of the Taskforce Speakers Bureau. Michael also worked as a fellow for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee as they considered national reform in 1994. He began his career as a legislative aide for Senator John Kerry where he worked on health and environmental issues.

Michal Horný is a health services researcher and health economist interested in the affordability of health care and its consequences. His work examines how health policy, provider incentives (payment models), and patient incentives (cost-sharing and other aspects of health insurance benefit design) impact the use of care and ultimately health outcomes. He is also interested in drivers of health care spending and the assessment of the value of care. Michal is currently an Affiliate Research Fellow at the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute. He received his master's degree in Stochastics and Financial Mathematics in 2012 from VU University Amsterdam and his Ph.D. in Health Services Research in 2017 from Boston University School of Public Health.

Type of Mentoring: Research Guidance

I serve as Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Oregon State University. My research focuses on the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, class, and other socioeconomic and sociocultural constructs, and their relationship to health and health care issues. Furthermore, I am interested in the development and implementation of community, institutional, and policy-level strategies to better serve Latinx and other marginalized communities.

As an applied health policy researcher, Erika Martin uses mixed methods to evaluate issues related to the allocation of scarce public health resources, the adoption and impact of public health policies, and ways to improve the sustainability and impact of open health data initiatives. Her work in HIV policy includes examining the fairness and flexibility of funding formulas, interstate variation in state HIV programs, the budget impact of expanded HIV screening on public programs, how the Affordable Care Act will affect HIV care, the impact of New York's HIV testing law and Ending the Epidemic policy strategies, and the evolution of New York's opioid overdose policy response, and evidence for  to opioid overdosesystems-level opioid policies. In addition to her HIV policy research, she studies how public health agencies can release open data in a way that is more usable and fit for public health research, the effectiveness of Medicaid waiver programs, and other public health topics. She has considerable experience working with government clients to translate evidence-based research into practice. She enjoys mentoring post-doctoral, PhD, masters, and undergraduate students in various advising roles, writes a “PhD Hacks” blog for the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, and looks forward to connecting with junior scholars from other universities.

Type of Mentoring: Overall Professional Development

Prefer to Mentor: PhD Students

 

Lilliard Richardson is the Director of the Penn State School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy. He received his Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas and his B.A. in international studies from Missouri State University. He has been on the faculty at Duke University, the University of Tennessee and the University of Missouri, and he served as an executive associate dean in the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.  Richardson's research focuses on the policy analysis of health and safety policies, and he has taught courses on policy process, program evaluation, policy analysis, health policy, and research methodology. He has published over forty articles in refereed academic journals, such as the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Health Affairs, American Journal of Public Health, Policy Studies Journal, Evaluation Review and Legislative Studies Quarterly. He is a past president of the State Politics and Policy Association and has served on several editorial boards. Richardson held a Fulbright Fellowship in Belgium, and he has taught in China, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.  I am happy to serve as a mentor. In recent leadership roles, I have been very involved in the hiring and promotion processes, and I can help answer a lot of questions from that perspective.  We do not yet have a doctoral program in our school so I miss working with doctoral students and look forward to learning about the research interests and career goals of the student.

Type of Mentoring: Overall Professional Development

Prefer to Mentor: Master's Students

 

Dave Sulek is a Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton with 25 years of public policy, strategy development, and general management consulting experience.  Specifically, he analyzes emerging policy, regulatory, market, and technology trends for US Government clients, particularly those navigating the maze of disruptive statutory or mission change.  Dave spearheads efforts to design and pilot new policy analytics tools, methods, and techniques that blend traditional public policy and management approaches with advanced analytics.  For the past six years, Dave has focused primarily on issues involving the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with an emphasis on working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to design, pilot, and evaluate innovative, value-based payment and service delivery models.  Prior to that, Dave supported multiple agencies and the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee on cybersecurity, Internet Governance, homeland security, and intelligence topics.  He has published numerous articles on a wide range of topics to include cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, and Internet-based voting.  He received a master’s degree in national security studies from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Syracuse University.

Lisa Zingman is currently a Social Science Research Analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. She previously was the Policy Coordinator in the HHS Office of Adolescent Health and an Associate Analyst at Abt Associates. She is passionate about addressing the social determinants of health of children and families, especially by implementing and evaluating evidence-based programs and policies and partnership engagement. Ms. Zingman holds a BA from Tufts University, and a MSPH in Health Policy from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is loves mentoring students especially those interested in non-academic public policy careers.

Laura R. Peck, Ph.D., is a Principal Scientist at Abt Associates and has 24 years of experience evaluating social welfare and employment policies and programs, both in research and academic settings.  Prior to work at Abt, she was a tenured Associate Professor and Associate Dean at Arizona State University. A policy analyst by training, Dr. Peck specializes in innovative ways to estimate program impacts in experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations, and she applies this to many social safety net programs. Dr. Peck is the PI, Co-PI and Director of Analysis for several major national evaluations for the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development.  Peck is a co-author of a public policy text-book and is well-published on program evaluation topics.  She earned her Ph.D. from the Wagner Graduate School at New York University. Peck has served as a mentor to APPAM participants in the past as well as serving on panels for the APPAM student track and hopes that reflecting on her own career experiences (in both academic and private research) can provide insights for others.

Dr. Omar Isaac Asensio is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. His research examines the role of big data in public policy issues. He conducts large-scale field experiments and uses statistical and computational tools to identify the causal effects of policies and interventions at regional and global scales. His current projects focus on behavioral strategies for resource conservation in cities, building efficiency and resilience, vehicle electrification and machine learning in transportation and smart mobility. He is a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Data Engineering & Science (IDEaS), the Machine Learning Center, and the Climate and Energy Policy Laboratory.

When I was at UCSD I only once had a class from a woman professor. At CMU I never had a class from a woman professor--though I was fortunate to have a woman professor on my dissertation committee. When I began as an untenured assistant professor there were some years during which I was the only woman on my faculty. I was nonetheless lucky to have people who helped and mentored me in all of those places, and those experiences both showed me the importance of mentoring and some of the difficulties in being a member of an out-group. It can be helpful to have a mentor who will not be grading you, determining if your dissertation is done, etc. So, if you'd like some mentoring from someone who is knowledgeable in the academic Public Policy field and who does not have the job of assessing you, I am here to help. My PhD is in Public Policy Analysis and I've taught and administered in Public Administration and Political Science programs and have chaired an Econ program. I am currently on the faculty at a small private university, and I have been on the faculty at a giant public university. My research focus is urban environmental policy, especially environmental justice, and I have also done work in the scholarship of teaching.

Christopher Galik joined NC State in August 2016 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy. Galik, an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration, is primarily interested in institutions and the portability of governance systems. He brings an interdisciplinary perspective to his work, leveraging expertise in institutional theory, economics, and the natural sciences to address energy and environmental management and policy challenges. Galik obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology from Vassar College, a master’s degree in resource economics and policy from Duke University, and Ph.D. in forestry and environmental resources from NC State. Galik returns to NC State via Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, where he worked for the last decade on a variety of environmental and energy policy research and outreach initiatives. He has published multiple white papers, briefs and online discussion papers, as well as multiple peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Applied Energy, Energy Policy, Climate Policy, and others. Galik has also worked with private sector, NGO, academic, state government and federal agency stakeholders to plan and convene multiple panels, workshops and symposia on a wide variety of energy and environmental policy issues

Dr. Gilbert Michaud is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University. In this role, he conducts economic impact analyses and energy policy research affiliated with Ohio University’s U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) University Center and the Consortium for Energy, Economics & the Environment. Overall, his research focuses on economic and workforce development, as well as state and local renewable energy policies, with a particular focus on solar energy valuation methodologies, net metering, and community solar programs. Secondary research interests include industry clusters, cooperative organizations, state politics, and epistemological pluralism related to public policy theory.

I am an assistant professor in Sociology at UNC Charlotte, and was an assistant professor the University of Missouri in Public Policy and Public Health. I have benefited greatly from mentoring as I've strived to find what I call the "dream academic job"--a great job, close to family. I'd be happy to share any insights I've learned along the way.  My research examines the social demography of immigration and how programs and policies can promote the education and health of immigrant children and families.

Scott W. Allard is the Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington with expertise in poverty and inequality, social welfare policy, and urban policy. At the University of Washington, he serves on the Executive Board of the West Coast Poverty Center and Urban@UW research initiatives. Allard is author of Out of Reach: Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State (2009, Yale University Press), which examines the spatial and organizational challenges confronting local safety net providers. His latest book Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty in America (2017, Russell Sage Foundation Press), focuses on the changing geography of poverty within metropolitan America and which aspects of the contemporary safety net respond well to these changes. He has served as the co-director of the Family Self-Sufficiency Data Center at the University of Chicago since 2013. In addition to his appointment at the University of Washington, he is a nonresidential senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jeounghee Kim is an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work with research interests in policy analyses and low-wage labor market issues. She is currently writing on the implications of nonstandard employment on workers’ economic security and the roles that non-degree occupational credentials play for low-wage workers’ labor market outcomes. She is also working on developing a new employment survey to investigate the overlap between standard and nonstandard employment arrangements within low-wage labor market. Her most recent work dealt examined the prevalence and factors of the federal minimum wage violation among low-wage workers, earnings penalties of informal employment among direct care workers, and effects of parents’ nonstandard work schedules on childcare arrangements.  She relies on quantitative analysis using publicly available data files. She is interested in mentoring opportunities to meet with younger scholars in her field and help them navigate the academia.

In my current role, I teach social policy issues, work with my team to address our center’s mission of evaluating local programs that address systemic social issues, and produce research that addresses inequitable outcomes across social groups. Our research focuses on how public policy and inequity intersect to affect poverty reduction for families and individuals, housing and homelessness, and workforce development, among other social challenges. I strongly value providing students with applied, experiential work in public policy and social equity, which are experiences I pursued heavily and independently during my own graduate work. As a woman of color, the complexities of public policy in communities like mine influenced me to conduct research. Yet, I often lacked opportunities to discuss those issues with faculty members or discuss the ways my experiences affect my work. I also had little mentorship during graduate school related to non-tenure track policy careers, and spent a substantial amount of time feeling unsure about how I could use my degree to make a difference through policy research. As a result of my experiences, I frequently work with students of different disciplines and degrees to support their career goals relative to their interests and skills within public policy.

Stuart Bretschneider is a Foundation Professor of Organization Design and Public Management at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs. He is also Director at the school’s Center for Organization Research and Design (CORD). Previously Dr. Bretschneider was a Maxwell Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs and Director of the Center for Technology and Information Policy at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He was also Associate Dean and Chair of the Public Administration Department between 2005 and 2011 at the Maxwell School.  His research has focused on sustainable public procurement in US local government; on how public organizations make use of information technology and the effects of those technologies on public organizations; how public organizations employ forecasting technology and organize to carry out forecasting activities; and how sector differences affect administrative processes.  His work also includes numerous funded projects associated with the evaluation of public policy in the energy, environment and technology areas. His current research is focused on why non-US recipients of US Ph.D. degrees return to their countries of origin. A past president of the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF), Dr. Bretschneider was also a Director of the IIF. He was the Managing Editor for the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory from 1992-2000. Dr. Bretschneider received his Ph.D. in Public Administration from the Ohio State University in 1980.

Jason Coupet is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at NC State. Jason’s PhD is in Strategic Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. His research interests include strategic management, applied econometrics, organizational economics, research methods, and the nexus of public policy and management science. He is also a National Science Foundation Mentoring Fellow in Economics at Duke University. His research has appeared in Applied Economics, Business Strategy & the Environment, Administration & Society, and Nonprofit Management & Leadership, among others.  I'm interested in mentoring students to help prepare for applying for and entering PhD programs; the job market in public policy and public administration; and for students working as practitioners, he;ping them use rigorous research in their work.

I am an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark where I am also co-directing the Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration. During the Academic Year 2019-2020, I serve as OES Fellow in the Office of Evaluation Sciences at the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C.  My academic work applies insights from the behavioral sciences to public administration and policy. Substantively, I am interested in how institutional arrangements for public service delivery affect public employees and the people they serve – especially with regard to social equity in access to public services and programs.  I have volunteered to be a mentor because the first steps into academia can be overwhelming. I have benefitted from entering myself and Helen would like to give back and support emerging scholars in the field of public affairs in general, and in public administration/ management more specifically, in going ahead in planning their career. I am also available for advise on research, the job market, etc.

Agustin Leon-Moreta is Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Public Administration. He received a PhD in Public Administration and Policy from the Askew School at Florida State University. His research has appeared in Public Administration Review, the American Review of Public Administration, Urban Studies, State and Local Government Review, Public Administration Quarterly, and the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Policy.

Jiaqi Liang is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration. She received a Ph.D. in Public Administration (with a second major in Comparative Politics) from the School of Public Affairs at American University.  Dr. Liang's research interests encompass public management, bureaucratic politics, public policy process, policy analysis, social equity, environmental and energy policy, and comparative public administration and policy. Her current research agenda primarily covers three areas.  One section of her research explores the effects of policy design and public management practices on government agencies’ environmental policy implementation activities in the U.S., as well as the implications of the adoption of equity-oriented policies for government’s program management under environmental federalism.  Another line of her research examines questions related to bureaucratic motivation, performance incentives, and policy implementation in government agencies and quasi-public organizations (e.g., state-owned enterprises) in China, in the context of results-based management in environmental and energy policies.  Her third research area probes the relations between organizational diversity, representativeness of the public sector, diversity management, governmental performance, and social equity.  Dr. Liang's research has appeared in a variety of public administration and public policy journals, including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Administration, International Public Management Journal, and Policy Studies Journal.

Jodi Sandfort is professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and chair of the school's Leadership & Management Area. Her work focuses on improving the implementation of social policy, particularly those policies designed to support low-income children and their families. Sandfort is the founder and academic director of the Future Services Institute, an applied research and training center focused on public service redesign in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Human Services, county government, nonprofit service providers, and private foundations. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration, a preeminent honor recognizing her innovative leadership in the field.  In 2020, she will be in Denmark as a Fulbright Fellow.

Thomas S. Woodson is an assistant professor in the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University. He investigates the effects of technology on inequality throughout the world and the causes/consequences of inclusive innovation. For the past 3 years he has focused on the relationship between innovation and inequality in 4 areas: nanotechnology, 3D printing, science funding and engineering education. Dr. Woodson received his B.S.E in electrical engineering from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Public Policy for the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Prior to joining Stony Brook University, Dr. Woodson was a part of a multi-year National Science Foundation sponsored research center applying technology assessment techniques to analyze the societal impacts of nanotechnology. While on the project, Dr. Woodson and his colleagues examined the consequences of nanotechnology on inequality using a variety of methods including interviews, case studies, site visits, input/output analyses and bibliometrics analyses. Before that project, Dr. Woodson lived in South Africa and Burkina Faso doing various humanitarian and development projects. Dr. Woodson and his family currently reside in Centereach, NY although he was born and raised in Texas. In his spare time, Thomas does triathlons. His current goal is to complete a full Ironman.

Dr. Shilpa Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. She was an APPAM Diversity and Inclusion Fellow in 2018. Her areas of research include gender responsive budgeting, gender equity in the workplace and application of advanced qualitative methods. She serves on the executive board of American Society for Public Administration's (ASPA) Section for Women in Public Administration. Dr. Viswanath received her PhD from Rutgers University - Newark's School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) and an MSc from London School of Economics and Political Science. She was born and raised in Bangalore, India.