Bishara Addison is the Director of Job Preparation for The Fund for Our Economic Future. She works with local, regional, and national partners to seed and develop innovative solutions to workforce challenges, with the goal of building evidence of what works, driving systemic improvements, and advancing more equitable outcomes in income and employment.
Brett Barkley is a data scientist in the Supervision and Regulation Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. In his current role, he conducts research and builds data-driven solutions to support the Bank’s mission of ensuring a safe, sound, and fair financial system.
Timothy J. Bartik, Ph.D. is a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His research focuses on how broad-based prosperity can be advanced through better local labor market policies. This includes policies affecting labor demand, such as state and local economic development policies, and policies affecting labor supply, such as place-based scholarships.
Scott Burns is Senior Vice President and SBA Underwriting Manager for PNC Bank. He is responsible for PNC’s Business Banking loan underwriting and fulfillment for SBA lending and portfolio management. Scott and his team played a key role in implementing SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program at PNC.
Mark K. Cassell, Professor of Political Science at Kent State University. He teaches public policy and administration courses, comparative public policy, and urban politics. His scholarship is mainly concerned with public sector transformations. His latest book is Banking on the State: Germany’s Public Savings (Agenda Press/ Columbia University Press 2020).
Sungwoong Choi, Ph.D., is Associate Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade in Sejong, South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo in Geography. His research interests include regional development, industrial policy, and economic geography.
Kristopher Deming is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD in Economics from Colorado State University. His research interests include the Earned Income Tax Credit, entrepreneurship, banking deserts, and regional development.
Mary Donegan, PhD, is a professor at the Urban and Community Studies, University of Connecticut. Her work is driven by questions of how local governments and institutions can leverage scarce resources to foster just economic and community development. Much of her research evaluates economic and community development policies and programs enacted by state and local governments.
Randall W. Eberts, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, after serving as president for 26 years. His research and expertise focus on the public workforce development system, with particular emphasis on statistical methodologies to set performance targets and to refer participants to services.
George Erickcek, Ph.D. is a regional consultant for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. In addition to being the Co-Editor of the Economic Development Quarterly, he conducts economic impact studies and economic development strategies at the state and local level.
Richard Florida, Ph.D. is University Professor, Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy at the Rotman School of Management and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, School of Cities, University of Toronto. His research provides unique, data-driven insight into the social, economic, and demographic factors that drive the 21st century world economy.
Todd Gabe, Ph.D. is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maine, where he teaches and conducts research on a broad range of topics related to state and local economic development. Gabe is an expert in the analysis of occupations and industries, with a focus on the importance of human capital and the knowledge and creative economies to regions large and small.
Darrene L. Hackler, Ph.D. is a consultant and serves as senior advisor to Smart Incentives and Business Development Advisors, focusing on equitable economic development and incentive policy. Hackler's recent work assesses federal relief and recovery funds (CARES, ARP, SSBCI) for small business, entrepreneurship, and workforce development, and she advises on strategies and programs to utilize funding lines to achieve equitable results.
Matt Hall, Ph.D. is Professor of Public Policy and Sociology, Director of the Cornell Population Center (CPC), Director of the Program on Applied Demographics (PAD), and Director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA). His research focuses on immigration, racial/ethnic inequality, neighborhood change, and demographic methods.
Ellen Harpel is the founder of Smart Incentives and president of Business Development Advisors LLC (BDA), an economic development and market intelligence consulting firm in Arlington, VA. Her work focus is on ensuring that incentives support community objectives and help places grow in the way their residents desire.
Yasmin Hilpert is Senior Policy Director for the Council on Competitiveness. She is a researcher, consultant, and policy advisor focusing on labor and workforce development, technology, and innovation policy. She served as advisor to German and international labor leaders and worked in international organizations and think-tanks in Europe and the United States.
Michael Horrigan, Ph.D. is President of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He served previously as Associate Commissioner with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His research focuses on education and workforce development as well as labor market issues.
Bomi K. Lee, Ph. D is an NSF-funded post-doctoral scholar at the Department of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on interconnectedness of amity and enmity in international relations. She also has ongoing co-authored projects on climate change and interstate conflict.
T. William (Bill) Lester is Associate Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University. Bill specializes in urban and regional economic development. His research focuses on the role of social institutions and policy interventions in reducing income inequality and promoting balanced economic growth.
Andrew Lim is the Director of Research at the American Immigration Council where he leads data projects and research efforts that inform the conversation about immigrants and immigration. He has almost a decade’s worth of research experience in public policy through his work with New American Economy and the New York City Mayor’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning.
Dr. Scott Loveridge is a tenured full professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. His areas of expertise include impact assessments of polices, investments and shocks; economic development strategies for states and sub-state regions; university-based technology transfer system; and U.S. government rural development policies.
Yue Luo, Ph.D., is a spatial data scientist at Targomo GmbH in Berlin, Germany. Her research interests include spatial statistics, health geography, and health inequality.
Karen Mossberger, Ph.D. is the Frank and June Sackton Professor, School of Public Affairs, Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University. Her research interests include local governance, urban policy, digital inequality, evaluation of broadband programs and digital government.
Gilda (Gigi) Pedraza is the Executive Director and Founder of Latino Community Fund Georgia. She has more than 20 years of experience in the areas of general management, strategy, operations, marketing, and fund development in both for-profit and nonprofit spaces. She is the recipient of many distinctions, including the 2018 NFL Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award and the 2018 Women of Inspiration of the Atlanta Dream.
Xiomara Peña is the Vice President of Engagement at Small Business Majority. She works on strengthening relationships with policymakers, small business owners, and organizations across the country to amplify our equity lens in all areas of work. In 2019, Xiomara served on Governor Newsom’s Paid Family Leave Task Force.
Iliana G. Perez, Ph.D. is the Director of Research and Entrepreneurship at Immigrants Rising. She is also a lecturer in the Labor Studies Department at UCLA and in the Allies of Dreamers Certificate program at Claremont Graduate University’s School of Education.
Her research focuses on immigrant entrepreneurs, the occupational and educational attainment of immigrant students, and economics of immigration.
Marc Schneiberg, Ph.D. is the John C. Pock Professor of Sociology at Reed College. He is an economic and organizational sociologist who researches the rise, contemporary fates, and economic consequences of organizational diversity and alternatives to giant, shareholder corporations in American capitalism.
Torsten Schunder is a scientific officer in the Strategy and Monitoring Division of the Department of European and International Cooperation at the DLR Project Management Agency.
Michael Schwan, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cologne in Germany where he is part of the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics (CCCP). Currently, he is working on new forms of institutional ownership, corporate networks, and political-economic reactions to COVID-19.
Mark Schweitzer, Ph.D. is senior vice president of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Dr. Schweitzer’s research has focused on the macroeconomic impact of labor market developments, small business credit access, and the identification of factors contributing to regional economic growth.
Caroline Tolbert, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, where she regularly teaches graduate seminars in statistics and undergrad courses in digital media and politics. She was named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for her research on voting and state election laws. She is coauthor of several books and publications, including Choosing the Future: Technology and Opportunity in Communities (2021), which won the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for the best book from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Dan Wallace, M.Ed. is the Managing Director of Research and Development at the American Immigration Council. Dan has worked on immigration issues for the past 10 years in a variety of contexts, including grassroots organizing, local government, federal advocacy, and global philanthropy.
Stephan Weiler, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Colorado State University and Co-Director of the Regional Economic Development Institute (REDI@CSU). His current work focuses on regional economic growth and development in rural and inner-city areas, combining theoretical, empirical, and policy analyses on topics such as information, innovation, industrial restructuring, land use, public/private partnerships, immigration, entrepreneurship, gender, and the environment.
Howard Wial, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President and Director of Research at ICIC. He is an economist specializing in urban and regional economic development. At ICIC, he is responsible for designing and overseeing a research agenda to promote the revitalization of economically depressed communities.
Matthew D. Wilson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies and evaluates economic and workforce policies aimed at neighborhood revitalization, improving job quality, and increasing upward mobility.
Devon Yee is a senior analyst on the Research team at ICIC. Their research focuses on under-resourced communities, including work on the definition of an under-resourced community and on economic and social conditions of under-resourced communities.
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