People

Vipin Arora is the Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Dr. Arora oversees the production of closely watched economic statistics that provide an objective and timely picture of the U.S. economy. These include gross domestic product (GDP), personal income, and other national statistics, as well as data about states, counties, and industries, and U.S. international trade and investment.

He works with BEA's executive team to expand the agency's statistical programs and collaborates with BEA’s researchers to bolster the impact and effectiveness of research that furthers the agency’s mission. He is working with leadership to position BEA as an employer of choice for years to come.

Before joining BEA, Dr. Arora served as acting deputy assistant director of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF). He also served as deputy director of NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, one of the federal government’s 13 principal statistical agencies.

At NSF, Dr. Arora oversaw data analysis, information dissemination, operations, human capital management, and multiple special projects. He led the creation of new partnerships between the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and other federal agencies to better understand topics of importance in science and engineering.

Before that, he led economic analysis at the U.S. Energy Information and Administration. Dr. Arora also served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, as an analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and in the private sector in multiple organizations.

Dr. Arora holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Australian National University, a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois.

Professor Athey is The Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Science and is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economics Association to the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contributions to thought and knowledge.

Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and the application of digital technology to social impact applications.

As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and has served on the boards of multiple private and public technology firms. She also served as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. She was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and she is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB. In 2022, she took leave from Stanford to serve as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Professor Athey is the 2023 President of the American Economics Association, where she previously served as vice president and elected member of the Executive Committee.

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Branstetter is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. From 2011-2012, he served as the Senior Economist for International Trade and Investment for the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the Daniel J. Stanton Associate Professor of Business and the Director of the International Business Program at Columbia Business School. Branstetter has also taught at the University of California, Davis, where he was the Director of the East Asian Studies Program, and at Dartmouth College. He has served as a consultant to the OECD Science and Technology Directorate, the Advanced Technology Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the World Bank. In recent years, Branstetter has been a research fellow of the Keio University Global Security Research Institute and a visiting fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Japan. Branstetter holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) from Northwestern University, and he earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1996.

Erik Brynjolfsson is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), professor by courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. He has done pioneering research on digital commerce, the Long Tail, bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance.

Brynjolfsson speaks globally and is the author of nine books including, with co-author Andrew McAfee, best-seller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future as well as over 100 academic articles and five patents. He holds bachelor’s and master;s degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a PhD from MIT in managerial economics.

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Professor Dame Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Diane co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her latest book is ‘Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be‘ on how economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy.

Diane is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics. She has served in public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a DBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List 2023 for her invaluable contributions to economic policy and practice, as well as her unwavering commitment to public service.

Rayid is a reformed computer scientist and wanna-be social scientist, but mostly just wants to increase the use of large-scale AI/Machine Learning/Data Science in solving large public policy and social challenges in a fair and equitable manner. Among other areas, Rayid works with governments and non-profits in policy areas such as health, criminal justice, education, public safety, economic development, and urban infrastructure. Rayid is also passionate about teaching practical data science and started the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship that trains computer scientists, statisticians, and social scientists from around the world to work on data science problems with social impact.

Before joining Carnegie Mellon University, Rayid was the Founding Director of the Center for Data Science & Public Policy, Research Associate Professor in Computer Science, and a Senior Fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Previously, Rayid was the Chief Scientist of the Obama 2012 Election Campaign where he focused on data, analytics, and technology to target and influence voters, donors, and volunteers. In his ample free time, Rayid obsesses over everything related to coffee and works with non-profits to help them with their data, analytics and digital efforts and strategy.

Dr. Joshua Hawley is a professor in the Glenn College at The Ohio State University, and he is also director of the Ohio Education Research Center. The OERC conducts research on policy and practice in the state of Ohio, preschool through workforce. He also serves as associate director for the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University.

Hawley was previously associate and assistant professor of workforce development policy in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State, a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia, and a visiting researcher at the New School University. Hawley has served as a consultant for many international agencies, including the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF, and has worked in Russia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Uganda and Ethiopia. He was awarded a second Fulbright for 2020-21 for work in the ASEAN states. This Fulbright will take place in 2021-22.

Hawley’s research is focused on workforce and education policy for state and national governments. He is the author/editor of two recent books:

Hawley, Joshua D. 2020. “Data Science in the Public Interest: Improving Government Performance in the Workforce.” Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Tonette Rocco, M. Cecil Smith, Robert C. Mizzi, Lisa R. Merriweather and Joshua D. Hawley (2020). “The Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education” (Stylus Pub. for the Association of Adult and Continuing Education).

He works with students at all levels in the Glenn College. He has advised some twenty doctoral students at the university. His teaching involves courses in education policy, workforce development and data analytics.

Hawley earned his Doctor of Education and Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Administration, Planning and Social Policy, as well as undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Asian languages and history.

Lesley Hirsch is the Assistant Commissioner of Research and Information at the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Her vision for the department is to bring cutting-edge digital tools to bear to deliver labor market intelligence to the department’s internal and external customers where, when, and how they need it and to mine every data source so it can tell its full story. Her 25-year career has been dedicated to using research to inform policies and programs, with an emphasis on improving the lives of low-income people nationwide. Ms. Hirsch is a recognized innovator in making research accessible and action-oriented. Prior to coming to NJDOL, she was the founding director of the NYC Labor Market Information Service at the CUNY Graduate Center, which provided research and consulting to policymakers and providers in the region’s workforce development system. She served as research director at the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, a public interest law and advocacy firm that successfully sued the State of New Jersey for equitable school finance on behalf of 300,000 of New Jersey State’s poorest schoolchildren. She is a graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University and has completed all but the dissertation in political science/public policy at the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught political science at the City College of New York.

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Harry J. Holzer is the John LaFarge Jr. SJ Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University' McCourt School of Public Policy, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings, and an Institute Fellow at the American Institute for Research in Washington DC. He is a former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and a former Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. He was a founding faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. He is a research fellow at IZA (The Institute for Labor Economics). He is also an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and of the Stanford Institute on Poverty and Inequality.

Holzer is an expert on the low-wage labor market, and has particularly studied the problems of minority workers in urban areas. He has authored or edited 12 books and several dozen journal articles, mostly on disadvantaged American workers and their employers, as well as on education and workforce issues and labor market policy. His books include Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students (2017, Brookings, with Sandy Baum), Where are All the Good Jobs Going? (2011, Russell Sage Foundation), Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men (2006, Urban Institute Press, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner), Moving Up or Moving On: Who Advances in the Low Wage Labor Market? (2005, Russell Sage Foundation, with Fredrik Andersson and Julia Lane) and What Employers Want: Job Prospects for Less-Educated Workers (1996,Russell Sage Foundation.)

His work has contributed to state and federal policies in a number of policy areas. For instance, his research on the difficulties faced by ex-offenders in the job market contributed to policies which ultimately resulted in the First Step Act of 2018; he advised the Obama administration on the inclusion of employment and training initiatives in the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act (ARRA, or the stimulus bill) of 2009 and on the vice president’s “job-driven training” initiative in 2014; and his research on minority employment difficulties and Affirmative Action has been cited in Supreme Court opinions on Affirmative Action. Holzer's research on the costs to the US economy of child poverty (in 2007) motivated other research on the topic, and was instrumental in getting the Biden administration to focus on reducing child poverty in their economic stimulus plan.

He received his BA from Harvard in 1978 (graduating Summa Cum Laude) and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1983. He has been the recipient of the Leslie Whittington Faculty of the Year Award at the McCourt School (known earlier as the Georgetown Public Policy Institute) in 2002 and the Hamilton Project Policy Innovation Prize in 2011 at the Brookings Institution. He has served on the boards of directors at the Economic Mobility Corporation and the National Skills Coalition, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

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Suzette Kent is a global business transformation executive. She served as the Federal Chief Information Officer for the United States from 2018 until July 2020. Kent’s career has included leadership roles ranging from partner at Accenture and EY to managing director at JP Morgan. She currently leads her own advisory business through which she continues strategic transformation work with clients around the world, across industries, and in the public and private sectors. Throughout her career, her focus has always centered on technology transformation, cybersecurity, digital enablement, workforce development, and ways that technology can be leveraged to solve challenges. Suzette is a strategic advisor to organizations, including serving on the Boards of a bank, a public university, and works with many companies on their Advisory Boards and as a subject matter senior advisor.

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Dr. Karin Kimbrough is the Chief Economist for LinkedIn Corporation. Prior to joining the LinkedIn Corporation in 2020, she served as the Assistant Treasurer for Google from 2017-2019 and the Managing Director and Head of Macroeconomic Policy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch from 2014-2017. In addition, Kimbrough worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a Vice President and Director for the Financial Stability Monitoring Function in the Markets Group from 2010-2014 and as a Manager for Analytical Development from 2005-2010. She was also an Economist and Strategist at Morgan Stanley from 2000-2005. Kimbrough serves on the board of directors for Fannie Mae, is an advisor to 3x5 Partners, and serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Academic Advisor Council and the Economic Advisory Panel of the New York Fed. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University, a master's from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford.

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Julia is a Professor at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She was a senior advisor in the Office of the Federal CIO at the White House, supporting the implementation of the Federal Data Strategy. She recently served on two White House committees: the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building and the National AI Research Resources Task Force. She is currently serving on the Secretary of Labor's Workforce Innovation Advisory Committee.

Julia is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Statistical Institute and the American Statistical Association. She is the recipient of the 2014 Julius Shiskin award and the 2014 Roger Herriot award. She is also the recipient of the 2017 Warren E. Miller Award and the 2019 Distinguished Fellow award from the New Zealand Association of Economists. She holds a PhD in Economics and an MA in Statistics.

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Adam Leonard is the Chief Analytics Officer & Director of the Division of Information Innovation & Insight (I|3) for the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). Adam envisioned and founded I|3 to help TWC leverage its most important untapped resource - its data – to help the agency and its partners better help employers, individuals, families, and communities achieve & maintain prosperity; #DataforProsperity

I|3 gathers, publishes & analyzes Labor Market Information, develops & supports a modern Analytics Infrastructure, conducts advanced Analytics and Evaluation and work to leverage it for Business Transformation.

Adam works extensively with federal, state, and local partners to improve the use of data in both the education & workforce system (singular) in Texas and nationally and in the public sector more broadly. He serves on national committees and workgroups relating to data analytics, technology, and accountability. Over the past year he has turned his attention to AI, particularly as relates to ethics, bias, and standards as well as how it presents both an incredible challenge to the education and workforce system and also an opportunity to force desperately needed changes that will better serve employers, individuals, families, and communities.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. And during her sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to September 2018, Dr. Li was Vice President at Google and served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Since then she has served as a Board member or advisor in various public or private companies.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li obtained her B.A. degree in physics from Princeton in 1999 with High Honors, and her PhD degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005. She also holds a Doctorate Degree (Honorary) from Harvey Mudd College.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li’s current research interests include cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, robotic learning, and AI+healthcare especially ambient intelligent systems for healthcare delivery. In the past she has also worked on cognitive and computational neuroscience. Dr. Li has published more than 300 scientific articles in top-tier journals and conferences in science, engineering and computer science. Dr. Li is the inventor of ImageNet and the ImageNet Challenge, a critical large-scale dataset and benchmarking effort that has contributed to the latest developments in deep learning and AI. In addition to her technical contributions, she is a national leading voice for advocating diversity in STEM and AI. She is co-founder and chairperson of the national non-profit AI4ALL aimed at increasing inclusion and diversity in AI education.

Dr. Li has been working with policymakers nationally and locally to ensure the responsible use of technologies, including a number of U.S. Senate and Congressional testimonies, her service as a special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, a member of the California Future of Work Commission for the Governor of California in 2019 - 2020, and a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force (NAIRR) for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2021-2022.

Dr. Li is an elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). She is also a Fellow of ACM, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a recipient of the Intel Lifetime Achievements Award in 2023, a recipient of the 2022 IEEE PAMI Thomas Huang Memorial Prize, 2019 IEEE PAMI Longuet-Higgins Prize, 2019 National Geographic Society Further Award, IAPR 2016 J.K. Aggarwal Prize, the 2016 IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Award, the 2016 nVidia Pioneer in AI Award, 2014 IBM Faculty Fellow Award, 2011 Alfred Sloan Faculty Award, 2009 NSF CAREER award, the 2006 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship, among others. Dr. Li is a keynote speaker at many academic or influential conferences, including the World Economics Forum (Davos), the Grace Hopper Conference 2017 and the TED2015 main conference. Work from Dr. Li's lab have been featured in a variety of magazines and newspapers including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Science, Wired Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Financial Times, and more. She was selected as a 2017 Women in Tech by the ELLE Magazine, a 2017 Awesome Women Award by Good Housekeeping, a Global Thinker of 2015 by Foreign Policy, and one of the “Great Immigrants: The Pride of America” in 2016 by the Carnegie Foundation, past winners include Albert Einstein, Yoyo Ma, Sergey Brin, et al.

Dr. Fei-Fei Li is the author of the book "The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration and Discovery at the Dawn of AI", published by Macmillan Publishers in 2023.

Nestor Maslej is a Research Manager at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). In this position, he manages the AI Index and Global AI Vibrancy Tool. In developing tools that track the advancement of AI, Nestor hopes to make the AI space more accessible to policymakers, business leaders and the lay public.

Nestor’s work on AI, namely the AI Index, has been cited in newspapers across the globe including: The New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, Al Jazeera, Fortune, Forbes, San Francisco Chronicle, Politico, The Register, Der Spiegel, The Verge, IEEE Spectrum, VentureBeat and more. Nestor’s publications have likewise informed AI policymaking worldwide, having been referenced by policymakers in countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Japan as well as Korea.

Nestor also speaks frequently about trends in AI, having briefed high-level US policymakers, testified in front of both the Canadian and Italian parliaments and presented to CEOs from a plethora of industries. Nestor is also a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) where he regularly writes opinion pieces on developments in AI. In his spare time, when he is not musing about AI, Nestor likes to hike, ski, cook and read.

Prior to joining HAI, Nestor worked in Toronto as an analyst in several startups. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 2021 with an MPhil in Comparative Government (Distinction), and Harvard College in 2017 with an A.B. in Social Studies (Magna Cum Laude, PBK).

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Layla O’Kane is a Senior Economist and Research Director at Lightcast, where she manages projects that use labor market analytics to further public policy. Recent research topics include the diffusion of artificial intelligence, remote work growth, and skill disruption. Layla has presented her work at conferences organized by the UN, OECD, and APEC among others and has had her work featured on NPR, in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other national media.

Layla holds a BA in Economics and in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Brent Orrell is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on job training, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. Specifically, his research focuses on expanding opportunity for all Americans through improved work readiness and job training and improving the performance of the criminal justice system through rehabilitation and prisoner reentry programs.

Before joining AEI, Mr. Orrell worked in the executive and legislative branches of the US government for over 20 years. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to lead the Employment and Training Administration of the US Department of Labor, and he served as deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Administration for Children and Families at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. Orrell is the editor of “Rethinking Reentry” (AEI, January 2020), in which he authored the chapter “Identity and Agency: A New Approach to Rehabilitation and Reentry.” He is also the host of the podcast “Hardly Working.” A frequent contributor to the popular press, Mr. Orrell has been published in Law & Liberty, RealClearPolicy, RealClearMarkets, and The Hill.

He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon.

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Jason Owen-Smith is a sociologist who examines how science, commerce, and the law cohere and conflict in contemporary societies and economies. Together with collaborators, Jason works on projects that examine the dynamics of high-technology industries, the public value of the research university, and the network organization of surgical care. He seeks to understand how organizations, institutions, and networks can maintain the status quo while generating novelty through social transformations, scientific discoveries, and technological breakthroughs.

Manish Parashar is Director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute and Presidential Professor in the University of Utah’s Kahlert School of Computing. He recently completed an IPA term as Office Director of NSF's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, where he oversaw investments in national cyberinfrastructure. He also served as co-chair of the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on the Future Advanced Computing Ecosystem and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force. Manish is a fellow of AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.

Vanessa Parli is the Director of Research at HAI. She leads the HAI grant programs, research convenings, student groups and “state of AI” reports such as the AI 100 and the AI Index where she is a member of the Steering Committee. Her team also analyzes the effectiveness of these programs to continuously improve HAI’s ability to foster interdisciplinary research collaborations internal and external to Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Vanessa worked in management consulting where she utilized statistics, machine learning and other data science methodologies to advise government agencies, large biotech companies and nonprofit organizations. Vanessa holds an MS in Engineering Management and Computational Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University.

Ray Perrault is a distinguished computer scientist in SRI International’s Artificial Intelligence Center, of which he was Director for 30 years and the co-chair of the AI Index Steering Committee, part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Intelligence. His main research interests are in natural language processing and speech act theory. He was co-Principal Investigator of the CALO Project, a large, multi-institutional, DARPA-funded project whose objective was to build an intelligent office assistant that learns through interaction with its user and the world. Several technologies developed on that project, including Siri, have been transitioned to commercial and military applications. He is a Fellow of AAAI and AAAS, has been President of IJCAI and ACL, co-Editor-in-Chief of the Artificial Intelligence Journal, and received the IJCAI Donald E Walker Distinguished Service Award. He is chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan.

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Nancy Potok is the CEO of NAPx Consulting. She formerly was the Chief Statistician of the United States, co-chairing the Federal Data Strategy and serving as a Commissioner on the bipartisan Commission for Evidence-Based Policy Making. She previously served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Census Bureau; Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the US Department of Commerce; Senior VP for Economic, Labor, and Population Studies at NORC at the University of Chicago; and Chief Operating Officer at McManis & Monsalve Associates, a business analytics and organizational transformation consulting firm. Dr. Potok has been an adjunct professor at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. She is the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award, the Secretary of Commerce Gold Medal and Silver Medals, Risk Manager of the Year Award, Federal 100 Award, and the Arthur S. Flemming Award. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA, Column Editor for the Harvard Data Science Review, and on the Board of Visitors for the Computing and Information Science School at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. at The George Washington University.

Dr. Nela Richardson is ADP’s Chief Economist and ESG Officer. Nela is the head of the ADP Research Institute (ADPRI), where she leads economic research and provides reliable and timely analysis for the public, global and local businesses, and policymakers. Her background and expertise cross many industries, including finance, technology, housing and labor.

In response to the accelerated pace of economic change, Nela led the launch of a high-frequency revamp of the renowned ADP® National Employment Report in collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Together with her team of researchers, data scientists and financial markets experts, Nela drives the Institute’s mission to generate data-driven discoveries about the world of work through research initiatives, such as Pay Insights, Global Workforce View and Women at Work, among others.

In addition to ongoing labor market analysis, Nela provides insights on the dynamic shifts of the economy. She is a highly sought speaker and has delivered remarks at global thought leadership events, including the World Economic Forum Annual Conference in Davos and the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. Nela is also a regular contributor to top-tier media outlets, including Marketplace from American Public Media. She frequently appears on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business CNN, Yahoo! Finance, The Wall Street Journal, FORTUNE magazine, The New York Times, among others. Nela’s MainStreet Macro blog offers insights on how economic conditions affect small businesses, workers and households.

Prior to her work at ADP, Nela was Principal and Investment Strategist at Edward Jones, a financial services firm, where she analyzed and interpreted economic trends and financial market conditions and recommended investment strategies. Nela previously served as chief economist at Redfin Corp., a national real estate brokerage and technology company, where she led a team of data scientists, economists and writers to track trends in the housing market. She also worked as a senior economist for Bloomberg, L.P., covering housing and financial markets.

Nela has held research positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Freddie Mac. She also worked as an adjunct finance professor at the Carey School of Business at John Hopkins University. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park with concentrations in financial economics, international finance and economic development. Nela also attained a master’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, where she was a triple major in mathematics, economics and philosophy.

Nela serves on the Stanford Digital Economy Lab Advisory Group, CSIS Council of Geoeconomic Advisors, National Academies, Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on National Statistics and the Committee on Automation and the U.S. Workforce. She also serves on the World Economic Forum Council on the Future of Job Creation. She is a member of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Advisory Committee, the Conference of Business Economists, and the foundation board for the National Association of Business Economists.

Nela is a registered representative of ADP Broker Dealer, Inc. (ADP BD), Member FINRA, an affiliate of ADP, Inc., One ADP Blvd, Roseland, NJ 07068 and Principal Investment Strategist for ADP Strategic Plan Services, LLC (SPS) an SEC Registered Investment Adviser. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or services.

Emilda B. Rivers is the director of the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), the principal statistical agency housed as a division within the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Directorate. NCSES serves as a clearinghouse for information about the US science and engineering enterprise, often in a global context.

Prior to her appointment as NCSES director, Rivers was the NCSES deputy director. She previously led the center’s largest program area: the Human Resources Statistics Program. She has also worked for the US Census Bureau and US Energy Information Administration.

In 2017, Rivers was named by Forbes as one of 25 Women Leading Data and Analytics in the US Government. She graduated top of her class in mathematics from South Carolina State University and has a Master of Science degree from the University of Maryland, College Park.

IPaul Romer is a University Professor at Boston College and directs its new Center for the Economics of Ideas. In 2018, he was a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics. The work recognized by the prize presented an “economics of ideas” that differs in a fundamental way from the traditional economics of scarce physical objects.

Paul received his B.S. in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Economics from the U. of Chicago. Before coming to BC, he taught at NYU, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, and Rochester. In 2001 he started an education technology company, Aplia, that he sold to Thomson Learning in 2007 (which was soon spun out as Cengage Learning.)

Paul served as the Chief Economist at the World Bank where he worked to advance the multilateral institution’s critical research function. He was the Founding Director of NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, which works to help cities plan for their futures and improve the health, safety, and mobility of their citizens. He also launched the concept of a city-scale startup that he called a Charter City, in honor of the first constitution, the charter that William Penn wrote for his startup–Pennsylvania.

Paul’s other contributions to public policy include his work with United States Department of Justice on the Microsoft Antitrust case and his service on Singapore’s Independent Academic Advisory Panel on University Policy. (See below for a selection of short articles on a various policy issues.)

He is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a non-resident scholar at Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Ontario. In 2002, he received the Recktenwald Prize for his work on the economics of ideas. Paul earned a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago after pursuing graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Queens University.

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Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe is an Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the economics of technology and labor. Recent research projects focus on 1) understanding how firms compete for software developers, 2) how software engineers choose technologies in which to specialize, and 3) how AI is transforming HR management.

Much of this research uses Internet-scale data sources to measure labor market activity at novel levels of granularity. His published papers have analyzed data from online job sites and other labor market intermediaries that generate databases of fine-grained information on workers’ skills and career paths or on employers’ job requirements. He is a co-author of “The Talent Equation: Big Data Lessons for Navigating the Skills Gap and Building a Competitive Workforce,” published by McGraw Hill in 2013.

His research has been published or is forthcoming in a number of academic journals including Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, The Review of Financial Studies, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Communications of the ACM, and Information Economics and Policy and it has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His research has also won a number of awards, including the Best Published Paper in Information Systems Research and two papers have been nominees for the Best Published IS Paper in Management Science. He currently serves on the editorial board of Management Science and in the past, has served on the editorial board of Information Systems Research.

Professor Tambe received his S.B. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Managerial Science and Applied Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

David Wasshausen is Associate Director for National Economic Accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In that role, Mr. Wasshausen oversees the calculation of official economic statistics that track the performance of the U.S. economy. These include BEA's flagship economic measure, gross domestic product (GDP), as well as its major components such as consumer spending and business investment. He also oversees industry statistics, including GDP by industry, gross output, and BEA's input-output accounts.

Mr. Wasshausen also serves as chief of the Expenditure and Income Division in the National Economic Accounts. With more than 30 years of experience in national economic accounting, Mr. Wasshausen has played a prominent role in BEA's efforts to provide a fuller and more timely picture of the U.S. economy. Those efforts include the September 2020 acceleration of both industry and state quarterly GDP statistics to align with the third estimate of U.S. GDP for each quarter.

He has led efforts to develop new statistics, including statistics measuring the economic impact of arts and culture, new and improved measures for intellectual property products, and expanded integrated macroeconomic accounts statistics. He has co-authored papers on a range of topics, including the measurement of infrastructure in the National Economic Accounts, and the role of hedonic methods in measuring real, or inflation-adjusted, GDP.

Mr. Wasshausen has received awards for his leadership and innovation, including U.S. Department of Commerce Gold and Silver medals, the department's highest honors.

He holds a master's degree in economics from American University and a bachelor's degree in economics from Miami University.