APPAM Policy Council and Leadership Election
The Policy Council is APPAM's governing board and is responsible for setting policy and creating strategy for the Association. It currently consists of four elected cohorts serving staggered, four-year terms of office. The APPAM officers (ex officio voting); the APPAM Executive Director and the Editor of JPAM (ex-officio non-voting) comprise the Executive Committee; the Executive Committee is also part of the Policy Council.
Elections for the new four-person cohort on the Policy Council, President-Elect, Vice President and Secretary begins on December 10th. The election will run until midnight Eastern Time on January 10th. Ballots will be emailed to all APPAM members in good standing.
Among the four person cohort for the Policy Council, one is a researcher in a non-academic setting; one is an institutional representative selected by the Committee of Institutional Representatives; two are researchers who work in academic settings; and one of these researchers is in the early career phase. All will serve four-year terms.
Finally, one student is appointed annually to serve a two-year term on the Policy Council. There are two student seats on the Board and one new student is selected for service each year. They will be appointed by the APPAM President, Matthew Stagner, and the Chair of the Institutional Representatives, Patty Troppe. We are accepting nominations for this position until December 31st. Please e-mail Tara Sheehan for more information.
You can view a list of the current APPAM Officers, descriptions of each officer position, and the current APPAM Policy Council Members.
How to Vote
Voting for the next Policy Council cohort, which will serve from 2019 through 2022, and for Vice President and Treasurer, who will serve from 2019 through 2020, begins December 10th. The election will conclude at midnight, Eastern Time, on January 10th, 2019.
Follow the links below to the list of all nominees on this year's ballot. All current members will receive email instructions on how to vote on December 10th and will receive periodic reminders to vote until the January 10th deadline. If your membership has lapsed, you will not receive an e-mail with voting instructions. If you want to check the status of your membership, please do so here. If you have not received an e-mail and feel that your membership is current, please contact Tara Sheehan.
Leadership Nominees
The following is a list of nominees for APPAM's Officer Positions of Vice President and Treasurer. Please note that President-Elect Matthew Cancian, Vice President John Martinez and Treasurer Sanya Carley were appointed to their positions by the APPAM Nominating Committee and voted by acclamation at the 2018 Fall Research Conference Membership Meeting. Their statements are being presented for transparency and completeness and they are included in the ballot, although they are running unopposed.
President-Elect Nominee
Uncontested; serves a 1-year term, automatically becomes APPAM President after the 2019 Fall Research Conference.
Maria Cancian, Georgetown University
I am truly honored to be invited to serve as the President-Elect of APPAM—an organization that has been my professional home since I first attended the annual research conference as a graduate student, more than 25 years ago. I have served in a number of roles, including Co-Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee and the Diversity and Equity Committee, as well as Vice President, Secretary, and a member of the Policy Council. APPAM has changed and grown in important ways over the years, while maintaining a clear focus on supporting rigorous research, informed debate, and high quality education and training-- all in an effort to improve public policy and management. I look forward to contributing to the tremendous work of the APPAM community as we continue these efforts.
The primary responsibility of the President-Elect is to plan the APPAM fall conference, which will take place in Denver on November 7-9, 2019. The current political context underscores the value of bringing together researchers and practitioners with a wide range of perspectives to engage the evidence and discuss how best to improve public policy. I hope the conference theme, “Rising to the Challenge: Engaging Diverse Perspectives on the Issues and Evidence,” will encourage a conference with conversations that reach across disciplinary, methodological and ideological divides.
Of course, the key to a vibrant and engaged conference and organization is our membership. I want to thank both new and longstanding members of APPAM for your many contributions, and encourage you to share your ideas and get involved—whether by volunteering to serve on a committee, serve as a mentor, or assuming other roles. I look forward to working with APPAM’s great professional staff, the leadership, and all our members, to sustain and develop APPAM in the years to come.
Vice President Nominee
Uncontested; serves a 2-year term; there are two Vice Presidents on APPAM's Executive Committee and Policy Council, serving staggered terms.
John Martinez, MDRC
I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as an APPAM Vice President and look forward to working closely with the Executive Committee, the Policy Council, Institutional Members, and the broader APPAM community to support APPAM in continuing to fulfill its mission. I am a long-time APPAM member; attending the annual conference is something I look forward to every year. In fact, my first presentation as an MDRC researcher was at an APPAM conference nearly 20 years ago, and I have attended every fall conference (and many spring conferences) since then.
I just completed a term as an Institutional Member representative to the APPAM Policy Council and have had the privilege of chairing the Diversity Committee for the past four years. I am proud of the accomplishments of the committee during that time. APPAM has now supported attendance at the fall conference for three rounds of Diversity and Inclusion Fellows, providing opportunities for traditionally underrepresented public policy scholars to experience APPAM as the welcoming community of researchers that it is. APPAM has also sponsored several public policy bootcamps, exposing undergraduates traditionally underrepresented in policy graduate schools to what a career in public policy might look like. But there is still more to do to increase the diversity of those engaged in policy research, and I am committed to continuing this important work in my new role.
I am currently MDRC’s Director of Program Development. In that role, I focus on developing and implementing rigorous evaluations of interventions targeted to adults and youth disconnected from the labor market and/or education. I spend a lot of time in the field, working closely with program administrators and staff, providing me with an opportunity to witness how social policy is put into action on the ground. But my interest in policy predates my 21 years at MDRC: I began my career as a food stamp eligibility worker, and I have also worked at an alcohol and drug treatment center and a community mental health center. These experiences, though rewarding, showed me firsthand the shortcoming of programs not designed to allow for continuous improvement and learning — highlighting the need for good evidence-based social policy, a focus that drew me to MDRC and to APPAM.
Thank you for this amazing opportunity. I look forward to continuing to serve the APPAM community over the next two years.
Treasurer Nominee
Uncontested; serves a 2-year term.
Sanya Carley, Indiana University, SPEA
It is a great honor to be considered for the position of Treasurer. I have been a proud and devoted member of APPAM for eleven years. I especially appreciate the Association’s emphasis on high quality research and engagement through conference and journal activities. I also value the integration between academic and practitioner perspectives. As a Treasurer, I will continue to foster such quality of inquiry and integration of perspectives. I will also work with other APPAM leaders to uphold the financial strength of the Association and maintain the many benefits of membership and conference attendance.
I am an Associate Professor and Chair of the Policy Analysis and Public Finance faculty at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. My research focuses on electricity and transportations policies, energy justice, and public perceptions of emerging energy technologies. Through the years, I have served APPAM as a member and chair of conference program committees, a mentor to junior scholars, a poster judge, a webinar participant, and a managing editor and more recently a co-editor of JPAM. Over my time as a member of APPAM, I have worked actively to recruit new professionals to the Association, and to continually improve the quality of the Natural Resource Security, Energy, and Environmental Policy track by composing panels on important and timely research topics. As Treasurer, I will bring expertise gained from prior association leadership through the positions of Treasurer-Secretary, Vice President for Academic Engagement, Presidential Advisor, and general council member for the United States Association for Energy Economics.
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Nominees in a Non-Academic Setting
One will be elected for a 4-year term.
Liana Fox, Census Bureau
I am thrilled to be nominated for the APPAM Policy Council. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I have always considered APPAM to be my intellectual home. I joined APPAM during graduate school and have presented, discussed or organized a panel at the Fall Research Conference nearly every year since then. I look forward to the opportunity to serve on the Policy Council to foster relationships across the three pillars of APPAM: academia, the government, and policy/research organizations.
I currently lead the U.S. Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) research area. In this role, I conduct research on potential improvements to the SPM, working in partnership with researchers from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics and academia. My research agenda has primarily focused on understanding poverty and labor market outcomes among middle-class and low-wage workers with an emphasis on governmental policies and programs. Currently, I am working on an administrative records linkage project which aims understand the extent of misreporting of noncash benefits in the CPS ASEC and develop imputation models to correct for underreporting.
My background spans academia, private sector and government. Prior to joining the Census Bureau, I held a post-doc at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) at Stockholm University, worked on program evaluation at Abt Associates, and analyzed the impact of minimum wage policies at the Economic Policy Institute. As a member of the Policy Council, I would bring my experience working collaboratively alongside policy analysts, economists, and sociologists to continue to advance APPAM’s mission and work across disciplinary silos. I am committed to ensuring that APPAM continues to develop as an inclusive organization that promotes diversity and supports the development of students and newer members. Thank you for the opportunity to serve APPAM!
Ilene Harris, IMPAQ International
Thank you for the opportunity to apply to the APPAM Policy Council. I believe that my experience in academia, in the private sector, and with federal policy and clients has positioned me to both significantly contribute to the APPAM Policy Council.
As Vice President and Chief Research Officer at IMPAQ International, I lead IMPAQ’s Pharmaceutical Health Services Research and Policy content area. I am responsible for developing and maintaining research agendas with high quality and impact, and ensuring appropriate communication of our research with internal and external stakeholders.
I can bring to the Policy Council more than 30 years of clinical and research experience. In addition, I have extensive organizational management and board experience. In the past, I have been an active, contributing board member to national and state organizations such as the American Public Health Association and the Maryland Pharmacists Association. My professional network is wide and deep. I can bring to the association a large rolodex of contacts from academia, the private sector, federal and state policy organizations, health care providers, and other leading health care companies.
Prior to joining IMPAQ in 2014, I was Department Chair of the Pharmaceutical Health Services Research Department in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. I was responsible for overseeing a department that focused on policy, pharmacoeconomics, and pharmacoepidemiology research funded by public and private grants and contracts. In addition, I was responsible for overseeing the Department’s PhD program, advising PhD and PharmD students, and mentoring junior faculty. I believe that these experiences would be valuable to the APPAM Policy Council.
Throughout my career, I have mentored young researchers by teaching, advising, and guiding with example. In addition to my regular responsibilities as a Council member, I plan to contribute to APPAM’s mission of improving public policy and management by working to enhance APPAM’s mentoring programs.
On a personal level, I feel that I can also professionally benefit from this opportunity. APPAM’s leadership comprises a well-versed group of experts in public policy analysis and management, who share my vision of increasing the relevance of policy research with policy makers and clinicians. I welcome the opportunity to work with and learn from them.
In summary, I believe that my combined clinical, research and teaching experiences have well prepared me to serve on the APPAM Policy Council. I would be honored to become a member and am prepared to dedicate the time required to provide meaningful input.
Thank you for your consideration.
Laura Peck, Abt Associates
APPAM is the most important professional forum in our field, and I am honored to be nominated to serve on its Policy Council. The substantive and methodological discussions at the APPAM conference are top notch, as is its journal, JPAM. They invigorate research and keep participants and readers coming back for more. I have been an APPAM member for 23 years, I have engaged in 22 Fall Conferences, and I regularly review for JPAM.
In my professional work—now as a Principal Scientist at Abt Associates and previously from a faculty position at ASU’s School of Public Affairs—I evaluate the effectiveness of social welfare policies and programs in hopes of improving conditions for the most vulnerable in society. Along the way, I aim to advance methods for assessing the impacts of policies and programs, under the premise that high quality evidence is essential to democracy and governance. To me, these scholarly and practical endeavors completely align with APPAM.
Over the years, I have served on APPAM’s Program Committee, helping to build new program areas (gender) and enrich established ones (methods). As an Institutional Representative (for Arizona State University and Abt Associates), I have focused on encouraging balance between academic scholarship and policy practice. Previously on the Policy Council (first elected 2012 in a “practitioner” role), I have been a member of the policy relevance and international committees and served as chair of the membership committee. I eagerly say “yes” to other APPAM duties: mentoring doctoral students, providing opportunities for first-time conference attendees, judging poster sessions, evaluating fellowship applications, reviewing student conference proposals, facilitating institutional member forums, etc.
I look forward to the opportunity to work together with you, my APPAM colleagues, to ensure that it achieves its mission, to improve public policy and management by fostering excellence in research, analysis and education.
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Nominees in an Academic Setting, Early Career (early career nominees are within 10 years of the receipt of their terminal degrees)
One is elected for a 4-year term.
Bradley Hardy, American University
I would be honored to serve on the APPAM Policy Council. I am an Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University, and have participated in APPAM activities since the early 2000s as an MPP student. If elected to serve, I hope to continue APPAM’s role in strengthening relationships between academic institutions and (1) local policy research professionals, (2) research institutions and think tanks, and (3) government research institutions. I have worked with professionals spanning federal research institutions, think tanks, and local government and know that APPAM is a natural venue to promote these connections. I believe these relationships are important for several reasons. First, there is a natural co-dependence. Policy research—much of it academically driven—is relevant to these constituencies and these constituencies, in turn, can provide helpful intellectual capital to improve the research activities of the association. I believe this continued inclusion will improve research, inform policy implementation, and also add to the diversity of our Association. Finally, strengthening these connections can broaden the range of rich post-graduate employment and career opportunities that undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students from schools of public affairs might experience.
My research interests intersect with many challenges facing cities and states, including economic instability, poverty policy and transfer programs, and socio-economic outcomes both within and across generations. I hope to continue to give voice to how these issues are impacting the nation, and how APPAM can contribute to the improvement of socioeconomic conditions. In addition to my academic appointments, I am a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and a visiting scholar with the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I also work closely on research projects with the District of Columbia Office of Revenue Analysis. I am deeply committed to the work of APPAM and would greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve on the Policy Council, continuing to propel our mission forward.
Marci Ybarra, University of Chicago
It is an honor to be nominated for APPAM’s Early Career Policy Council position. I have participated in APPAM as an attendee, moderator, or presenter for over 15 years. The organization and its membership have been instrumental in my growth as a scholar and academic. My research focuses on the aftermath of the welfare reforms of the 1990s for particularly affected groups’ socioeconomic well-being, including low-income families who increasingly rely on a siloed safety net, low-income pregnant and new mothers, and children in immigrant families. I draw on multiple methods, theoretical frameworks, and social policies in my work. I have collaborated with sociologists, developmentalists, economists, and political scientists for a number of years. The diversity of my scholarship and collaborative relationships is a reflection of my interdisciplinary training and commitment to interdisciplinarity as a fundamental tool in improving rigor in social science. I am also deeply committed to diversity and equity in professional organizations, including APPAM. If elected, I would champion APPAM’s commitment to rigorous interdisciplinary research and increasing the diversity of APPAM scholars along with other traditional responsibilities of the Policy Council. To this end, I would draw on both my professional and institutional experience in these domains to support existing efforts toward a more inclusive APPAM and work toward developing new ways in which to move forward. Thank you for your consideration.
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Nominees in an Academic Setting
One will be elected for a 4-year term.
Kalena Cortes, Texas A&M University
I would be honored to serve on the APPAM Policy Council. I am an Associate Professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. My research interest is in the area of the economics of education. I primarily focus on issues of equity and access, identifying educational policies that help disadvantaged students at the PK-12 and postsecondary levels.
I have extensive experience providing leadership and service to other professional associations. I am currently serving as a Committee Member of the American Economic Associations’ (AEA) Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP), and recently finished a term as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP).
I have been an APPAM member since graduate school and would be thrilled to serve on APPAM’s Policy Council. Like many of you, I have benefitted greatly from this outstanding organization. Now, I would like to give back to the organization who has given so much. If elected to the Policy Council, I would work on building on APPAM’s ongoing efforts to increase the diversity and inclusion of its members, and continue and strengthening its long standing tradition of supporting and mentoring the next generation of multidisciplinary policy scholars.
Heather D. Hill, University of Washington
For twenty years, APPAM has been my professional home. I joined the association as a master’s student and I have attended most APPAM fall conferences since then, acting as presenter or discussant more years than not. I have also served as an ad-hoc reviewer for multiple JPAM submissions and for, in 2018, for conference proposals. Throughout my training and work experience, I have benefitted greatly from the mentoring, learning, networking, and publishing opportunities at APPAM. I am running for Policy Council to pay those opportunities forward by helping APPAM meet the challenges and imperatives of the future.
I received an MPP from the University of Michigan in 1999 and a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2007. Between those programs, I worked at Mathematica Policy Research for three years conducting evaluations of welfare-to-work and early childhood education programs. For the past 10 years, I have served as a faculty member in policy and social work schools. My research examines the effects of low and unstable income, participation in means-tested programs, and workplace regulations on families with children. At the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, I teach courses for MPA students in program evaluation, child well-being and public policy, and race and equity in policy and governance.
I would like to help APPAM build on its broad and inclusive membership and on its value of making research useful to policy makers. In both these areas, I think we can do more to attract early career members and to encourage their full participation in APPAM conferences, trainings, and publications. In addition, I think that APPAM should increase focus on two pressing and overarching themes in current and future policy. First, we can better acknowledge and address the racial and gender inequities in representation and leadership in the policy analysis and management fields. Second, we can elevate climate change as a crosscutting context and driver in all areas of policy, including energy, education, health, and social services. These issues intersect, as the communities most likely to be affected by the effects of global warming are also the communities who are underrepresented in political offices, policy research, and program management. It would be my honor to work on these and others issues in service of APPAM.
Douglas Lee Lauen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
I am delighted to be nominated to the APPAM policy council. Since first presenting my work as a new assistant professor in 2008, APPAM has been key to my professional development. Now I feel it is time to give back. I would like the policy council to 1) enhance APPAM’s central role in the development of its members, especially for those early in their careers, 2) ensure that APPAM remains a broad tent for scholars of all backgrounds and disciplines, and 3) promote evidence-based policy in this era of ideologically-driven debate.
I am an associate professor of public policy and sociology at UNC Chapel Hill. I have worked in an academic setting, in applied research, and in local and federal government. I received a PhD in sociology and an MPP from the University of Chicago. I work in the field of education policy, which brings me in contact with policymakers and practitioners. These varied experiences help me understand policymaking and research from multiple perspectives. Thank you for your consideration.
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Institutional Member Representative
One will be elected for a 4-year term.
**Please note: only institutional members vote for the institutional member representative on the Policy Council.**
Sarah Jane Brubaker, Virginia Commonwealth University
I am a sociologist in the criminal justice and public policy programs of the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. I served as the school’s first Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and as an institutional representative to APPAM from 2012-2017 while in that role. I have been actively involved in planning the APPAM Student Regional Conferences. I also served as the Director of the Wilder School’s PhD program in Public Policy and Administration from 2015-2018, during which time I helped to organize and facilitate the first meetings of PhD program directors at two APPAM Fall Research Conferences.
My scholarship and teaching bring an intersectional and social justice framework to gender-based violence, juvenile justice, health care experiences of marginalized groups, and qualitative and community-based research. I have published theoretical and empirical articles on sexual assault and Title IX, girls in the juvenile justice system, and teen pregnancy.
I co-created a Certificate in Gender Violence Intervention in 2003 and continue to direct the program, which focuses on training practitioners seeking both clinical and policy-focused careers, and involves networking with local nonprofit agencies. My leadership in this program, as well as our PhD program, have helped me realize the importance of bringing scholarship to policy and practice at all levels. These experiences, as well as moving from a sociology department to an interdisciplinary professionally-oriented School, have provided me with an appreciation for transdisciplinary, policy-oriented and practitioner-focused scholarship that I emphasize in my work with students and colleagues.
I have served two terms on the Board of Directors for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, from 2009-2011 and 2016-2019. I served on the Editorial Board of the journal Gender & Society from 2008-2011 and as Chair of the Body & Embodiment Section of the American Sociological Association from 2011-2014. I hope to broaden and enhance my involvement in APPAM through participation on the Policy Council. Drawing from my administrative experience and leadership in academic and professional organizations, my approach on the Council would be to develop strategies for expanding the scope and reach of the organization. I hope to assist in finding ways to engage more students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines and organizational contexts in policy work at multiple levels that makes a difference in the lives of marginalized groups.
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