Vice President Nominees

One will be selected; serves a 2-year term; there are two Vice Presidents on APPAM's Executive Committee and Policy Council, serving staggered terms. 

Jenni Owen, Office of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper

As the only government official on the policy council, I am honored to be nominated for APPAM vice president. Since joining APPAM in 2005, I have worked to expand the involvement of local, state, and federal policy professionals with APPAM’s largely academic membership. For 11 consecutive years, I have co-led a fall conference roundtable focused on evidence-based policy and featuring elected and executive branch officials, leaders of national philanthropies, on-the-ground practitioners, and scholars. In addition to increasing the diversity of sectors engaged with APPAM, it is critical for APPAM to continue its focus on diversity, broadly defined. Recent initiatives have strengthened APPAM’s commitment to diversity and equity, an ongoing effort that I will continue to support and that is informed by my experience as chair of the Policy Council’s policy relevance committee and my participation in the APPAM Mentor Matching Program.

I am the Director of Strategic Partnerships for North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, having served as Policy Director for the first two years of the administration and before that director of policy engagement and faculty at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. This combination of public sector and academic experience (along with prior stints in state and federal government) gives me valuable perspectives that I continuously draw on to benefit APPAM.

As vice president, among the ideas I will propose are 1) sessions at every APPAM fall conference developed by government officials; 2) expanding institutional membership particularly among HBCUs and HSIs; 3) launching and growing "policy boot camps" that bring together public, private, and community college students; and 4) partnership opportunities with other national organizations and associations. For example, the National Conference of State Legislatures is establishing an Evidence-Informed Policy Center, which will present unique possibilities for partnership with APPAM.

As I conclude my fourth year as a member of the APPAM Policy Council, I welcome the opportunity to help continue the important work of bridging research and policy and of engaging emerging scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in APPAM’s mission and work in creative, meaningful, and lasting ways.

Kosali Simon, Indiana University

I’m so pleased that our field has as vibrant, as rigorous, and as welcoming an association as APPAM. Its truly been a professional “home” for me from the time I was a graduate student over two decades ago, to currently serving on the APPAM Policy Council since 2016, being part of the Fall Conference program committee for many years before that, and serving as Co-Editor of JPAM from 2010-2015. I’m thrilled to now be nominated to serve in the Vice President role of an institution that has benefited me tremendously. In turn, I’m passionate about ensuring that junior researchers can get to where we got FASTER and achieve MORE. No matter where the field is headed, if we are vigilant, listen to incoming generations of scholars, and strike where opportunities exist we can pave the path towards greater impact and more rewarding professional experiences for all APPAM members. If elected, one area I would continue to prioritize is APPAM activities in research communication—translating between academic and practitioner spheres is a strength of APPAM that draws such diverse perspectives and makes us unique. By way of background, I am a faculty member of the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University (IU) where I am also the Herman Wells Endowed Professor and serve as the Associate Vice Provost for Health Sciences. I also serve outside IU as Editor of Journal of Health Economics, Co-Editor of Journal of Human Resources, and I am a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). My research is in health policy, examining impacts of government policies related to health insurance coverage and the economics of the opioid epidemic.

Secretary Nominee

One will be selected; serves a 2-year term.

Laura Peck, Abt Associates

I am honored to be nominated to serve as APPAM Secretary and be part of the Executive Committee.  I have been an APPAM member for 24 years, I have engaged in 23 Fall Conferences.  Over that ~quarter century (!), 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.  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.

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.

I am eager to continue my engagement in the APPAM leadership to continue to grow our association’s reach. I support recent efforts to diversify who we engage, how we engage them, and our avenues for influence. What remains constant is commitment to our underlying mission: to improve public policy and management by fostering excellence in research, analysis and education. I look forward to the opportunity to work together with you, my APPAM colleagues, to advance that mission in creative ways that stay true to the quality of our work.

 

Rachel Swanger, Pardee RAND Graduate School

I am the fulltime associate dean at the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) one of the original schools of public policy and the only one focused exclusively on the PhD, where I am responsible for day-to-day management of the school including resource allocation, student support, and execution of the academic program.  On rare occasions these days, I also conduct research at RAND where my areas of expertise include Japanese politics, the media, and Japan’s economic, foreign and defense policy. My research has focused primarily on issues related to Japan’s policy decision making on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, disaster relief, energy resources, and ballistic missile defense.  I was also an author in RAND's series on nation-building.  Prior to joining RAND in 1994, I worked in Japanese as a features and political reporter for the Sankei Shimbum in Tokyo, where I had the distinction of being the first non-Japanese ever admitted to the Prime Minister's Press Club.

My introduction to APPAM was as an institutional representative at the 2006 fall research conference in Madison, WI, and though my research areas are not well-represented at APPAM, as a policy wonk and former journalist, I was hooked.  Over the years, I have served on the Policy Council, on the diversity committee, as a poster judge, on the program committee and helped launch the student conference in Los Angeles.  If elected, I would draw on the note-taking and reportorial skills I developed long ago in Tokyo in serving as APPAM’s Secretary.  But whether called upon to serve this role or not, I will continue to be an advocate for APPAM and the values it represents to Pardee RAND students, to faculty, to RAND researchers and beyond.

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Nominees in an Academic Setting

Two will be elected for a 4-year term.

Paul Baker, Georgia Tech

I am honored to be nominated for the APPAM Policy Council. This is especially exciting given the tremendous current impact that policy in general, and which APPAM specifically has, a characteristic I have observed having been a member of APPAM over the years. As my current work and research activities have shifted in the direction of applied policy analysis and research, I find that APPAM offers exceptional opportunities for collaboration, dissemination and social impact.  I have benefitted tremendously from my association with APPAM, and serving on the Policy Council would be a meaningful way of repaying that privilege.

Much of my work relates to network activities, along a number of dimensions – social, diffusion of knowledge and in terms of innovation. Perhaps because of this, my frame tends to be one focused on connections and linkages.  This is where I see APPAM particularly standing out, a perspective that goes beyond the analytic and prescriptive, to be translational, proactive and innovative in its ability to communicate the power of policy analysis as positive social force. Further the subject matter that I work with, workforce development, the impact of social media on community activities, technological innovation, and access and barrier mitigation for people with disabilities and the aging, are critical issues of concern in a rapidly changing society.

If elected, I can offer experience that ranges from the academic, having taught courses in public policy, political science, and publica administration, through research and project management, to development of applied solutions in public as well as industrial sectors. I have found that a policy perspective, when applied in a creative manner, offers unexpected value to disciplines that are not used to thinking in this manner. Efforts to enhance APPAM’s outreach and awareness activities could help bring these valuable approaches to wider audiences, both domestically and internationally.

Currently I am a Principal Research Scientist, and the Senior Director of Research and Innovation at the Center for Advanced Communication Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My professional activities also have a significant international component, as I previously was an Adjunct Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway’s Centre for Disability Law and Policy, the Visiting Scholar, Workforce Innovation Policy, Beihang University, School of Economics and Management, Beijing, China. In addition, my educational background has also provided me with a range of disciplinary perspectives: I hold a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University, an M.Planning from University of Virginia, and a B.S. in Aquatic Ecology from the University of Wisconsin.  Organizationally, I have served on several national boards in a policy- related capacity including NARRTC (formerly, the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers), and as Chair, Government Affairs Committee for the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America (RESNA). Currently, I am the Chair for Research Council 11 (Science and Politics) of the International Political Science Association.

If elected, I will draw upon my experience working across a number of disciplinary, institutional, and ideological barriers to help enhance the public perception of policy research and analysis. For instance, increasing the inclusion of vulnerable populations such a people with disabilities, in policy development is a key was to bridge the gaps between policy, and practice, as well as between industry, the academy and the public sector. I am convinced that APPAM is well positioned to help to bridge these gaps and I look forward to helping devise new and innovative approaches to effective policymaking.

Anil Deolalikar, University of California, Riverside

I have served as Founding Dean of the School of Public Policy (SPP) at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) since 2013. I played a key role in envisioning and then establishing SPP. It has been a fascinating exercise in building the School from scratch – recruiting faculty from both within UCR and nationally, setting up the School’s undergraduate and graduate programs, and recruiting students into the program. An important goal of the School is to cultivate and nurture a new generation of policy and community leaders from under-represented communities within the inland Southern California region (which is predominantly Hispanic-Latino-Chicano in its demographic composition). More than two-thirds of our BA (Public Policy) and MPP students come from under-represented minority backgrounds.

My faculty appointment is in the Department of Economics. Much of my research has been in the economics of population, health and education, primarily in developing countries. More recently, I have also published in the area of governance and accountability in public service delivery. Over the years, I have worked extensively with international organizations, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and with several emerging-country governments in Asia and Africa in developing and evaluating social-sector policies, programs and projects.

Our School has already partnered with APPAM on a number of initiatives. In 2017, we hosted the inaugural APPAM California Regional Student Conference, and will be hosting the 2020 conference next April as well. In September 2018, we partnered with APPAM in hosting the Public Policy Camp, which brought undergraduate students, primarily of under-represented minority backgrounds, from around Southern California with the objective of exposing them to graduate studies in public policy. We are hoping to host the APPAM Public Policy Camp again in 2021.

I am honored to be nominated to the APPAM Policy Council. If elected, I will continue to work with APPAM on increasing the diversity and inclusion of its members – students, researchers, and practitioners.

Anthony LoSasso, DePaul University

I am Professor and Driehaus Fellow in the Economics Department at DePaul University in Chicago. I am an economist whose research spans several dimensions of health and labor economics, health policy, and health services research. My keen interest is in how government policies affect private sector decisions. My research has explored the impact of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program on insurance among children; how community rating provisions in state health insurance markets affect health insurance coverage; how the health care safety net affects the health and well-being of children; how health insurance benefit design affects health care utilization and health outcomes. Much of my research has received extramural funding from AHRQ, NIH, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

I recently stepped down after seven years as Executive Director of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States. This position gave me a “front-row seat” to the remarkable growth of the field. During my leadership, we started a journal, launched initiatives aimed at student mentorship, LGBTQ engagement, and improving career advancement for underrepresented minorities. Additionally we moved from a biennial meeting format to an annual format. More importantly, I am inspired by the recognition from my peers that I am a leader who delights in bringing people together for the pursuit of a greater good. I would be honored to serve the members of APPAM as a member of the Policy Council.

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 a Non-Academic Setting

 

One will be elected for a 4-year term.

Jillian Berk, Mathematica Policy Research

I am honored to be nominated for the APPAM policy council. Since I presented at my first APPAM conference more than 15 years ago, I have thought of APPAM as my professional home. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to be involved with different aspects of the Fall Meeting, such as organizing sessions, judging posters, and co-chairing the employment program committee. At its best, APPAM is a place where individuals with diverse disciplinary training, professional, and personal experiences can come together to consider how to improve public well-being through public policy and management. If elected to the policy council, I would work to strengthen APPAM’s ability to fulfill this vision.

I am an associate director of research at Mathematica. My research focuses on employment and training programs for economically vulnerable populations, including the justice-involved, dislocated workers, workers with disabilities, and disconnected youth. I have worked closely with the Department of Labor to build evidence about how the workforce system can partner with others including the criminal justice system, community colleges, behavioral health organizations, and employers to support struggling workers and meet the country’s need for a skilled workforce.  Beyond my research, I also focus on hiring, mentoring, and staff development. I have a PhD in Economics and an AB in Public Policy from Brown University.

I started my career in public policy as a research assistant at the Urban Institute. I assisted researchers working with the Social Security Administration to develop retirement projects for this “far off” time of 2020. As we count the remaining days until 2020, I am reminded of the importance of being forward looking. The future will be here before we know it.

I hope the APPAM of the future will be an organization that continues to strive to connect researchers with practitioners and policy makers. It is also critical that APPAM facilitate opportunities for all of us to learn across program areas – APPAM is significantly less valuable if members operate in silos. I am also committed to systematic efforts to incorporate new voices into the discussion. I personally benefited from undergraduate training in public policy and mentorship within two institutional APPAM member organizations. I want to make sure that APPAM is the welcoming professional home that provides the training, mentorship, and networks for all who are dedicated to improving public policy and management. 

 

Randall Eberts, Upjohn Institute

It is an honor to be nominated for the policy council at APPAM.  As president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for more than 25 years, my colleagues and I have always turned to APPAM as the organization whose research interests and values are most consistent with our own.  The Institute’s research and my own focuses on labor issues and education, with a strong emphasis on conducting rigorous research that can inform policy and practice.  Since beginning my career as a faculty member of the economics department at the University of Oregon, I have devoted much of my research to issues related to local labor markets and the effect of teachers’ unions on student outcomes.  As a tenured associate professor, I then moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where I developed and headed the Regional and Micro Analysis research unit, which continued the same line of research but with even greater emphasis on labor and regional issues.  After a stint as senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where my portfolio was labor, education, and infrastructure, I moved to the Upjohn Institute, where I remain today as a senior researcher, after stepping down as President in March of this year.

In addition to the research mentioned, I have been involved in a number of projects focused on improving the nation’s workforce system.  This stems naturally from the Institute’s role as administrator of a local Workforce Investment Board, in which the Institute administers all federal and state workforce programs for a four-county area.  With the unique position of operations and research under one organization, my colleagues and I embarked on several innovative uses of administrative data.  In 1998, we developed for the state of Georgia, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor, a series of tools we referred to as the Frontline Decision Support System (FDSS).  FDSS combined administrative transactional data and UI wage records from the programs integrated through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) so that we could build algorithms that helped front-line staff work with customers to better guide them through the maize of decisions related to finding a job for laid-off workers or disadvantaged adult workers.  This work predated the widespread emphasis today on the use of artificial intelligence to help businesses make better decisions.  Yet, we continue to find ways to update the approach, and we are currently working with the state of Michigan with the support of several organizations, including the U.S. Department of Labor and foundations, to bring these models for the state workforce system in current practice of AI.  Since we launched FDSS in Georgia, we have worked with other states to use parts of that comprehensive system to develop such modules as a targeted referral system for Michigan’s welfare-to-work programs which is based on statistical relationships between customer attributes and outcomes and to help states update their profiling models, which are mandated under the Worker Profiling and Referral System Act.  During the Great Recession, I reintroduced regression-adjusted performance outcomes into the nation’s workforce programs for each of the 13 federal programs and set the performance targets for these programs for several years.  Currently, through a foundation grant, we are using similar techniques to help WIBs within states improve their performance by exchanging their best practices after estimating their respective value-added performance measures.

APPAM has provided an invaluable forum for presenting our research and methods and for receiving feedback that has definitely improved our work.  With a continued emphasis on using high-quality, rigorous research to assist workforce programs in improving their services to customers, I believe that APPAM can be a powerful force in using evidenced-based research to improve service delivery.

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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.**

Joe Cordes, George Washington University

 

Jane Lincove, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

I am an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. My research focuses on market-based education policies including school choice, teacher compensation, and college access. I have been an APPAM member since 2003, and UMBC’s institutional representative to APPAM since 2016.  I previously served on the Policy Relevance Committee, working to strengthen connections between education, research, and practice. 

 

I was fortunate to benefit from generous funding and supportive faculty in my policy education at UCLA (MPP) and University of Southern California (PhD), as well as mentorship and friendships formed at APPAM conferences. As a faculty member at a minority-serving university, I am committed to strengthening and diversifying the institutions of policy education and practice, including the vital relationship between APPAM and its institutional members. I also have extensive experience with research-practitioner partnerships, which motivates me to pursue new ways to strengthen relationships between research institutions, government agencies, and policymakers. I believe that APPAM and its institutional members – both universities and policy research organizations – play a central role in this work.  It would be an honor to represent the institutional members on the policy council. If elected, I will work to be a strong voice for institutional members on the council and to expand participation in APPAMs current and future programs.

Patty Troppe, Westat

I would be honored to serve as one of the Institutional Representatives on the APPAM Policy Council. I am Westat’s long-time APPAM Institutional Representative and the immediate past chair of the APPAM Institutional Representatives Committee (IRC). I am an Associate Director at Westat and have nearly 30 years of experience in education policy analysis.

I would bring a unique perspective to the Institutional Representatives on the Policy Council. I would be the only Institutional Representative from a non-academic member. My work on the Policy Council also would be informed by my efforts as past Chair of the IRC to bring together non-academic and academic Institutional members.

As a member of the Policy Council, I would seek out involvement in the forthcoming reassessment of the APPAM Strategic Plan to ensure Institutional Representative input into this important guiding document for the association. I also would volunteer for the Policy Relevance, Development and Communications Committee to look for ways to connect the research from the Institutional Representatives to practice.  I also would collaborate with the other Institutional Representatives on ways to make sure the Institutional Representatives voice is heard in Policy Council deliberations and other activities.

Thank you for your consideration.

 

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