Goals of the Program
The goal of the Future Leaders of Schools of Public Service (FLSPS) initiative is to create more racially and ethnically diverse leadership in schools of public service. The initiative advances this goal in four primary ways:
1.
Engage BIPOC faculty members who are interested in exploring academic leadership;
2.
3.
Cultivate a network of deans and directors of schools of public service who are committed to diversifying academic leadership and eager to support rising leaders; Deliver programming that aims to demystify academic leadership and share strategies to progress in institutions of higher education;
4.
Champion the professional advancement of BIPOC colleagues by referring program participants to academic leadership opportunities and growing the BIPOC candidate pool.
Over the course of the 2023-24 academic year, participants will be exposed to various aspects of academic leadership and engage with a team of 18 mentors who are deans or directors of schools of public service. Please find a timeline of this year’s programming on the following page.
Leaders of Schools of Public Service Timeline 2023-24
Future
Future Leaders of Schools of Public Service
Mentors 2023-24
Matthew Auer, University of Georgia
Nisha Botchwey, University of Minnesota
Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, University of Arkansas
Susan Gooden, Virginia Commonwealth University
Roger Hartley, University of Baltimore
Carla Koppell, Georgetown University
Halima Leak Francis, Tulane University
Siân Mooney, Indiana University
Rosemary O'Leary, University of Kansas
Sara Rinfret, Northern Arizona University
Jodi Sanfort, University of Washington
Carissa Slotterback, University of Pittsburgh
Ian Solomon, University of Virginia
Stacey Swearingen White, University of Illinois Chicago
Lois Takahashi, University of Southern California
David Van Slyke, Syracuse University
Susan Webb Yackee, University of Wisconsin-Madison
David Wilson, University of California, Berkeley
Matthew Auer Program Co-chair
School of Public and International Affairs
University of Georgia
Matthew R. Auer is dean and arch professor of public and international affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia (UGA). Prior to his appointment at UGA, Auer served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Prior to Bates, Auer was dean of the Hutton Honors College at Indiana University (IU) and professor of international environmental affairs at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU.
Auer has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on environmental, energy, and foreign aid policy. He has served in a variety of public policy roles at national and international levels. Auer was senior adviser to the US Forest Service from 2001 to 2006, and during that time was a member of the US delegation to the United Nations Forum on Forests and to the International Tropical Timber Council. Auer has implemented and evaluated energy and environmental aid programs on behalf of US federal agencies or other governments in, among other countries, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Laos, Mexico, Poland, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Nisha Botchwey Program Co-chair
Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs University of Minnesota
Nisha Botchwey, PhD, serves as the dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at University of Minnesota. Previously, Botchwey served as associate dean for academic programs at Georgia Tech Professional Education. In that role she was responsible for developing academic programs, overseeing all academic offerings and curriculum, and leading outreach and student affairs. She played a key role in leading Georgia Tech’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Botchwey’s research and teaching have been at the nexus of environmental and health policy and the built environment, with a special focus on youth engagement and health equity. Over her career, she has been awarded more than $16 million from leading agencies and foundations as principal investigator or coPI on more than thirty grant-funded projects. The impact of Botchwey’s public health and social justice work was recognized in 2021 with the prestigious Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning, and in 2016 by the White House Council on Women and Girls. Botchwey also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Planning Education and Research. 12
Clinton School of Public Service
University of Arkansas Victoria DeFrancesco Soto
Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, PhD, is dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas and previously served as assistant dean at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs. She is also a political analyst for NBC News and Telemundo. DeFrancesco Soto is the first Latina dean at a presidential institution, and she was named one of the top 12 scholars in the country by Diverse magazine. She previously taught at Northwestern University and Rutgers University and received her PhD in political science from Duke University. Her areas of expertise include civic engagement, women, immigration, Latinos, and political psychology. Underlying all of her research interests is the applicability of high-quality, rigorous research to on-the-ground policy realities. DeFrancesco Soto has spent over two decades bridging academic, practitioner, community, and media realms in her quest to cultivate public service engagement across our national landscape. An awardwinning professor, she is deeply passionate about the intersection of curricular and community-based learning and cultivating dynamic classroom environments that are responsive to our real-world context.
Susan Gooden
Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
Virginia Commonwealth University
Susan Tinsley Gooden, PhD, is dean and professor at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She is an internationally renowned scholar in the area of social equity. She has received numerous awards including a Fulbright Specialist Award, the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration, the Jewel Prestage Pioneer Award, and the Herbert Simon Best Book Award presented by the American Political Science Association.
Within the broader community, she serves on the executive boards of numerous nonprofit and public sector organizations. She is president of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), the world’s leading accreditor of master’s degree programs in public affairs, a past president of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), and a fellow of the congressionally chartered National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). Within Virginia, her contributions include gubernatorial appointments to the boards of the Virginia Retirement System and the Virginia Community College System.
College of Public Affairs
University of Baltimore Roger Hartley
Dr. Hartley has served as Dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore since 2015. Like many University of Baltimore students, he is a first-generation college graduate. He received a BS in Public Affairs in 1991 from Indiana University’s O’Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He went on to receive both his MA (1993) and Ph.D. in Political Science in 1999 from the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Dr. Hartley is an award-winning teacher and an academic leader with a commitment to building and supporting public engagement work. Dr. Hartley’s published research spans the fields of law, courts, and public administration with an emphasis on policy, administration and intergovernmental work of the judicial branch. He is most passionate about the value of public service and helping to train the next generation of public and nonprofit leaders in an impact-focused educational environment.
Carla Koppell
Walsh School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
Carla Koppell has a long and distinguished international affairs career. Prior to arriving at Georgetown, Koppell was a US Institute for Peace vice president, leading the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation. During the Obama Administration, Koppell was USAID chief strategy officer and senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment. In the Clinton Administration, she served as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Outside of government, Koppell has directed the Institute for Inclusive Security, led the conflict prevention project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and worked for the food and agriculture organizations of the United Nations. Koppell is widely published and an experienced public speaker. She has worked in over 30 conflict zones and developing nations in every region of the world. 12
Halima Leak Francis
John Lewis Public Administration Program, School of Professional Advancement
Tulane University
Halima Leak Francis, PhD, is a nationally accomplished educator, practitioner, and scholar, whose career has spanned more than 20 years, has focused on strengthening capacity, sustainability, and equitable practices within nonprofits, philanthropy, and higher education administration. She joined Tulane School of Professional Advancement in 2019 to lead the development of the school’s public administration program. As the program’s founding director and professor of practice, she worked with school leadership and advisors to steer curriculum design, recruited a nationally accomplished faculty, and secured accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Under her leadership, the program exceeded launch expectations by tripling initial enrollment projections and was later named in honor of the late US Congressman John Lewis – reinforcing its role as a contemporary voice for advancing inclusive public service and community leadership.
Leak Francis holds a BA in English from Hampton University, as well as an MA in sociology of education and a PhD in higher education administration from New York University. Leak Francis holds the Carnegie Corporation of NY professorship in Social Entrepreneurship at Tulane’s Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking.
Siân Mooney
Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University
Siân Mooney became the fifth dean of the Indiana University
Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs on August 1, 2019. Her research interests lie in questions related to the use of natural resources and the environment. She is an economist that has worked for many years on topics related to water use in the western United States, endangered species and the impacts of climate change, and she has secured more than $4 million in external grant funding. Recently, she has become interested in the incentives that scientists face to address complex problems as part of multidisciplinary teams and the role of science information in decision-making.
Mooney, PhD, came to Indiana University from Arizona State University, where she served as associate dean for interdisciplinary programs and initiatives for the College of Public Service and Community Solutions and as a professor in the School of Public Affairs. At ASU, Mooney directed collegelevel graduate degree programs, oversaw curriculum, and facilitated the approval process for academic programs across the college. She also coordinated international programs including study abroad.
School of Public Affairs and Administration
University of Kansas
Rosemary O'Leary is the Edwin O. Stene distinguished professor emerita at the University of Kansas. Previously she worked at Indiana University, Bloomington (professor) and the Maxwell School of Syracuse University (inaugural Phanstiel distinguished professor of strategic management and leadership). O’Leary has been actively engaged in public policy formulation and public management from many different perspectives, including that of practitioner, analyst, scholar, teacher, consultant, and university administrator. She has led divisions, institutes, programs, and a school of public affairs. She remains attuned to and engaged in the particular problems and opportunities of higher education, especially in the social sciences. O’Leary was president of the Public Management Research Association 2017-2019. In 2019, the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) established the Rosemary O’Leary Prize for excellence in scholarship on women and public administration. In 2021, the Academy of Management chose the 3rd edition of her book, The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government (CQ Press 2021) as the winner of the Best Book in Public Management Award. In 2021 she was awarded the Duncombe Award for outstanding mentoring of PhD students, given by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.
Rosemary O'Leary
Sara Rinfret
Department of Politics and International Affairs
Northern Arizona University
Sara R. Rinfret, PhD, is currently an associate vice provost for faculty affairs and professor of public administration at Northern Arizona University. She has more than a decade of higher education leadership experience serving in roles such as acting dean, associate dean, chair, and master of public administration director. Her scholarship is globally recognized in the areas of regulatory policy, environmental policy, women and government, public administration, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. To date, Rinfret has published nine books and more than forty-five peer reviewed articles, and several book chapters. Rinfret is an experienced leader, designing training and development for faculty, staff, and students focusing on areas such as emotional labor, performance measurement approaches, program evaluation, policy implementation, and holistic teaching evaluations. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Specialist Program in public administration and studied with scholars at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Dr. Rinfret holds an MPA from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs (Ohio State), and a PhD in political science from Northern Arizona University. Dr. Rinfret is committed to providing pathways of success for NAU’s faculty, staff, and students and appreciates working across disciplines to find solutions for higher education.
Jodi Sandfort
Evans School of Public Policy and Governance
University of Washington
Jodi Sandfort joined the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance as dean in January 2021. Sandfort’s scholarship focuses on improving the implementation of social policy, particularly those policies designed to support low-income children and their families. Her leadership uses participatory methods to activate others to address systemic biases that are reproduced through practices and processes. Sandfort’s career has bridged academia and the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. She served as director at the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis, managing an annual-giving portfolio of $20 million for the human services system in Minnesota. Sandfort was also a senior strategy consultant with the Bush Foundation, a senior fellow with the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and special assistant to the president of the University of Minnesota. She is deeply involved in the international Art of Hosting community, which has expertise in group facilitation and change processes. Sandfort earned a BA in history and women’s studies from Vassar College, as well as an MA in social work and a PhD in political science and social work from the University of Michigan.
Carissa Slotterback Program Co-chair
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs University of Pittsburgh
Carissa Slotterback, PhD, is dean and professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Since arriving at the University of Pittsburgh in October 2020, she has led major efforts in the school around diversity, equity, and inclusion; development and alumni engagement; research capacity building; and enhancing student experience. She is a widely published scholar in the areas of stakeholder and public engagement and decision-making related to environmental and land use policy and planning. She has a particular interest in how stakeholders perceive impacts and use information in making decisions, focusing on impact assessment and collaborative decision-making approaches. She has received funding for her research from organizations such as the US Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, and Minnesota Department of Transportation. 12
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy University of Virginia Ian Solomon
Ian H. Solomon is a professor of practice and dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where he leads a multidisciplinary faculty of scholars and practitioners who are committed to creating new knowledge, developing ethical effective leaders, and advancing solutions to humanity’s greatest policy challenges.
Trained as a lawyer, Solomon is a devoted student and teacher of both negotiation and conflict resolution. Over the course of his career, he has dedicated himself to improving the lives of people across the globe by integrating insights from his experiences in higher education, government, the private sector, and international organizations.
Originally from New York City, Solomon earned his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Yale Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Today, he lives with his family on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Stacey Swearingen White
College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs
University of Illinois Chicago
Stacey Swearingen White is dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA) at UIC. She joined the college on July 1, 2022 coming from the University of Kansas (KU), where she began her career as an assistant professor of urban planning. At KU, she served as the chair of the Urban Planning Department, co-founder and director of academic programs for the KU Center for Sustainability, and associate director of the environmental studies program. Most recently, she served as director of the KU School of Public Affairs and Administration.
Swearingen White’s research focuses on sustainability innovation at the local level, including emphases on water quality and campus sustainability. She has also contributed to recent work on the role of emotions in planning. Her research and teaching interests reflect her interdisciplinary training. She received a BA in philosophy from Emory University, an MS in environmental studies from the University of Montana, and a PhD in land resources from the University of WisconsinMadison.
Lois Takahashi
Price School of Public Policy
University of Southern California
Lois Takahashi, PhD, is the Houston I. Flournoy professor of state government and director of the USC Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento. Her research focuses on public and social service delivery to vulnerable populations in the US and in southeast Asian cities. Her research includes work on homelessness and HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles, community opposition toward social services in the US, social capital and health for vulnerable populations, and environmental governance in the US and southeast Asian cities.
Takahashi is a past director of the University of California, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Policy Multi-Campus Research Program (UC AAPI Policy MRP), where she worked with state elected officials and community organizations to develop policy-relevant studies that highlight areas of importance for California’s AAPI population. She was president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (20152017). She served as interim dean of UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs from August 2015 through December 2016.
David Van Slyke
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Syracuse University
David M. Van Slyke is dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and the Louis A. Bantle chair in business-government policy. He is a tenured, full professor at the Maxwell School and a two-time recipient of the Birkhead-Burkhead Award and Professorship for Teaching Excellence. Van Slyke is a leading international expert on public-private partnerships, public sector contracting and contract management, public and nonprofit management, and policy implementation. He is a member of the Defense Business Board (2020, 2021-Present), a former director (2015-2021) and fellow (2010-Present) of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a member of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Expert Advisory team for the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security (2021-2022). He is actively engaged in the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) and co-chaired the 2021 annual conference, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, and the University Leadership Council on Diversity and Inclusion in International Affairs Education. Van Slyke serves on the editorial boards of several top-ranked public affairs and nonprofit management journals including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
Susan Webb Yackee
La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Susan Webb Yackee is director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs and a Collins-Bascom professor of public affairs at UW-Madison. Her research and teaching interests include the US public policymaking process, public management, regulation, administrative law, and interest group politics. Yackee has published articles in a number of journals, including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, British Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Yackee received the 2019 Herbert A. Simon Career Contribution Award from the Midwest Public Administration Caucus. It is the highest award in the field of political science for the study of bureaucracy and public administration. She also received the Kellett Mid-Career Award for her research from UW-Madison in 2019. Yackee’s article “Clerks or Kings? Partisan Alignment and Delegation to the US Bureaucracy” (with Christine Palus) won the 2017 Beryl Radin Award for the best article published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory in the previous year.
Goldman School of Public Policy University of California, Berkeley David Wilson
David C. Wilson, PhD, was appointed dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) at University of California, Berkeley in July 2021. Prior to leading GSPP, he spent 15 years at the University of Delaware, where he served as a professor of political science and psychology, and spent eight years as an associate dean for the social sciences, in the College of Arts & Sciences. In 2018, he led the creation of the Joseph R. Biden Jr. School of Public Policy. Wilson is an expert in public opinion and political psychology. His research incorporates surveybased experiments to study political behavior and policy preference on highly contentious social issues. He is also the coauthor of Racial Resentment in the Political Mind (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
Prior to his time at University of Delaware, he worked as a senior researcher for the Gallup Polling Organization in Washington, DC. At Gallup, he led analytic consulting practice teams focused on employee engagement, performance measurement, and statistical reporting.
Future Leaders of Schools of Public Service
Participants 2023-24
Cecilia Ayón, University of California, Riverside
Lisa K. Bates, Portland State University
Luisa Blanco, Pepperdine University
K. Jurée Capers, Georgia State University
Shaoming Cheng, Florida International University
Yuan (Daniel) Cheng, University of Minnesota
Jason Coupet, Georgia State University
Harley Etienne, The Ohio State University
David Guo, Wichita State University
AJ Kim, San Diego State University
Jeffrey Lowe, Texas Southern University
Domingo Morel, New York University
Guido Pezzarossi, Syracuse University
John Ronquillo, University of Maryland
Abdul-Akeem Sadiq, University of Central Florida
Carla Jackie Sampson, New York University
Junko Takeda, Syracuse University
Denise Thompson, City University of New York
Michael Woldemariam, University of Maryland
James E. Wright II, Florida State University
Marisa Zapata, Portland State University
Yahong Zhang, Rutgers University-Newark
Cecilia Ayón
School of Public Policy
University of California, Riverside
Cecilia Ayón, PhD, is a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. She received her PhD in social welfare at the University of Washington, School of Social Work. She is a community-based researcher and specializes in hard-to-reach populations. Her substantive expertise lies in the intersection of sociopolitical factors, immigrant health, and Latinx family well-being. She has developed measures to understand the experiences of immigrant families with the immigration policy environment, Perceived Immigration Policy Effects Scale (PIPES) and the Latino Immigrant Family Socialization Scale (LIFS). Her research has been supported by the Foundation for Child Development, Silberman Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation.
Lisa K. Bates
Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and Black Studies
Portland State University
Lisa K. Bates, PhD, is a professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and in Black studies at Portland State University, and is the Portland Professor in Innovative Housing Policy. She earned a PhD in City and Regional Planning (2006) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in Political Science from The George Washington University (1999). Her scholarship focuses on housing and community development policy and planning that advances racial justice and housing rights. Currently Bates is the Primary Investigator of Evicted in Oregon, a multi-year investigation into the practices and procedures of eviction as a mechanism of displacement. Her body of research was recognized with the 2019 UAA-SAGE Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award. Dr. Bates has also developed a creative practice at the intersection of art inquiry, urban planning, and radical geographic thought. This work includes the award-winning Imagine Black Futures’ People’s Plan, and co-leading participatory action research on abolition futures visioning with Black Oregonians. She was awarded a Creative Capital fellowship to develop this practice of scholarship and cultural organizing towards new visions of Black history, present, and possibility. 12
Luisa Blanco
School of Public Policy
Pepperdine University
Luisa Blanco is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. She is a development economist and currently leads community-based participatory research projects focused on fostering economic inclusion and addressing health disparities. She leverages digital communications technology and tools to increase access to information and promote behavioral change among minorities to improve their financial wellbeing and health outcomes. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Center for Health Improvement for Minority Elders at UCLA and as research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank. Blanco was a fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Interdisciplinary Research Leadership program, a visiting scholar of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a senior visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oklahoma. She completed a BA in Business Administration and an MBA from Midwestern State University.
K. Jurée Capers
Department of Public Management and Policy
Georgia State University
K. Jurée Capers, PhD, is an associate professor and the director of master's programs in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on social and racial equity at the intersection of public administration, policy implementation, and race and ethnic politics. She often combines organizational theories, representation, and bureaucratic politics research to explain the factors that influence bureaucrats’ decision making and the implications of this process for historically marginalized populations. Substantively, her research centers on social policy issues, particularly education. Her research also explores the policy implications of ethnic diversity and bias within racial groups. Specifically, it probes how and why African, Caribbean, and AfroLatino immigrants differ from US-born Black people in their decision making, policy attitudes, and political experiences. Other topics of interest and research include higher education governance and management, the long-term effects of school disciplinary policies on girls, and school desegregation. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, American Review of Public Administration, the International Journal of Public Management, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and various other academic venues. Dr. Capers holds a PhD in Political Science from Texas A&M University, and she is a 2008 graduate of Winthrop University, holding degrees in psychology and political science.
Shaoming Cheng
Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs
Florida International University
Shaoming Cheng is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs of Florida International University. He received his PhD from the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. His research is devoted to evidence-based and dataaugmented decision making that informs effective and efficient public policy and administration options and designs. His work bridges the disciplines of public policy and administration and regional science, with a focus on two themes: economic development and local government management. The first research direction spans into investigations of a variety of policies and factors that are essential to economic growth and urban development, such as housing affordability, entrepreneurship and small business creation, local fiscal conditions, and business incentives. The other line of research explores key functions of local governments, including public service delivery, digital governance, advancement of social equity and sustainability, green public procurement, and fiscal responses to proliferation of private governments. His research has been funded, totaling over $3.2 million, by the National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, US Economic Development Administration, Kauffman Foundation, Cyber Florida: The Florida Center for Cybersecurity, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, as well as the City of Halladale Beach and the City of Boynton Beach.
Humphrey School of Public Affairs University of Minnesota Yuan (Daniel) Cheng
Yuan (Daniel) Cheng is currently an associate professor and chair of the Leadership & Management Area in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Daniel is also a McKnight Presidential Fellow and the managing editor of Public Administration Review. Daniel holds a PhD in Public Affairs and an MA in Philanthropic Studies from Indiana University. Daniel's research agenda is focused on a range of theoretical and managerial questions lying at the nexus of governance, government-nonprofit relationships, co-production, and the distributional and performance implications of cross-sector collaboration. He is particularly interested in how government agencies, nonprofits, and citizens interact in joint public service provision, and the performance implications of alternative service provision mechanisms. In close collaboration with governmental and community organizations, Cheng is currently embarking on new research directions to better understand the implementation of evidence-based practices in government, the policy impacts of academic research, and how to design more inclusive public sector grant-making programs.
Andrew Young School for Policy Studies
Georgia State University
Jason Coupet is an associate professor of public management and policy in the Andrew Young School for Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Jason’s PhD is in Strategic Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. He is on the Executive Board of ARNOVA, the APPAM Policy Council, and on the board of the Public Management Research Association. His research interests include strategic management, efficiency, performance measurement, organizational economics, management science applications in the public sector, and the political economy of organizations. His research has appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Business Strategy the Environment, Journal of Technology Transfer, and Nonprofit Management Leadership, among others. His work has been funded by the Sloan Foundation, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and the North Carolina Department of Transportation. His work has been covered by The Washington Post, The Conversation, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, and the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs
Jason Coupet
Harley Etienne
Knowlton School
The Ohio State University
Harley Etienne is an associate professor and Graduate Studies chair in the city and regional planning section. Etienne, PhD, also holds a courtesy appointment with Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Before joining Knowlton, Etienne was an associate professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He was also faculty in the School of City and Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Prior to his academic career, Etienne worked in Philadelphia in the public policy and economic development sectors for Greater Philadelphia First (now merged with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce), the Pennsylvania Economy League, and the 21st Century League, where he focused on policy issues including university-industry partnerships, K-12 school reform, health care access, and welfare policy.
He holds a BA from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, an MA from Temple University, a PhD in city and regional planning from Cornell University, and an MSt in law from Yale Law School.
Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs
Wichita State University David Guo
Dr. Hai (David) Guo serves as the fourth Regents Distinguished Professor of Public Finance at Wichita State University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the joined program between Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy. Additionally, he holds master’s degrees in Economics from Georgia State University and in Public Administration from Iowa State University.
Before joining Wichita State, Dr. Guo had worked at Florida International University for 14 years. His academic contributions center around state and local public finance, emphasizing fiscal governance, local government sustainability, and strategic intergovernmental interactions. His published work appears in top public administration journals. he was one of the academic partners in the Truth and Integrity of State Budgeting project backed by the Volcker Alliance, assessing best budgeting practices across all U.S. states. His other sponsored research also assessed state governments’ disclosure quality of the tax expenditure reports and fiscal impacts of COVID-19 on Florida state and its municipalities. Currently, he's engaged in revenue analysis for Sedgwick County. He served as the managing editor of the journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, and Financial Management from 2014 to 2017.
AJ Kim
School of Public Affairs
San Diego State University
AJ Kim is a distinguished visiting faculty fellow at University of Buffalo for 2023-2024. AJ Kim is an associate professor of city planning in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. Kim’s research is focused on immigrant participation in the informal economy and ethnic labor markets, as well as problems of community development and urban inequality more broadly. They have partnered with Los Angeles and Atlanta area municipalities and NGOs on planning for immigrant integration, with a focus on the experiences of undocumented/unauthorized Asian, African, and Latinx immigrants and refugees. They have degrees in gender and feminist studies (BA), ethnic studies (MA) and urban planning (UCLA, PhD) Their research has received grant awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, American Studies Association, GT Center for Urban Innovation, UC Center for New Racial Studies, and the UCLA and Berkeley Institutes for Research on Labor and Employment. Professor AJ Kim's studio research on demographic change and immigration in the Atlanta metro area has also received awards from the Georgia Planning Association (2017) and the Dale Foundation Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning (2018). Their book on issues of localized conflict, uneven "integration" and the emergence and growth of major immigrant destinations in suburban and urban places, is forthcoming. 12
Jeffrey Lowe
Barbara Jordan Mickey Leland
School of Public Affairs
Texas Southern University
Jeffrey S. Lowe is an associate professor in the department of urban planning and environmental policy, and director of the Center of Excellence for Housing and Community Development Policy Research, at Texas Southern University. His research and scholarship focus on social justice, racial equity, community land trusts, and, more broadly, policy formulation within the context of housing and community-based planning. He is the author of Rebuilding Communities the Public Trust Way (Lexington Press), which highlights cases of community foundation assistance to CDCs from 1980 to 2000 in Cleveland, Ohio, Miami, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana, several book chapters and technical reports, and peerreviewed publications including those in Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, Housing Policy Debate, Planning Practice and Research, Urban Geography, and Western Journal of Black Studies. Lowe earned a BA in business administration from Howard University; an MA of city and regional planning from Morgan State University; and a PhD in urban planning and policy development from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
Domingo Morel
Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
Domingo Morel is an associate professor of political science and public service at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. He studies and teaches racial and ethnic politics, urban politics, education politics and public policy. Specifically, his research explores the ways state policies help expand or diminish political inequality among historically marginalized populations. He is the author of Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Distinguished Book Award. He is also co-editor of Latino Mayors: Power and Political Change in the Postindustrial City (Temple University Press, 2018). His new book, Developing Scholars: Race, Politics and the Pursuit of Higher Education was recently published by Oxford University Press. He received his PhD in political science from Brown University in 2014.
Guido Pezzarossi
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Syracuse University
Guido Pezzarossi is an associate professor and undergraduate director of the anthropology department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Pezzarossi’s research is centered on using archaeology to better understand the entanglements between colonialism and capitalism and more thoroughly reconstruct the diverse assemblage of human and nonhuman actors that comprised early modern colonial contexts in the New World. The regional focus of his research spans Spanish colonial contexts in Guatemala and English colonial contexts in Massachusetts, providing a global comparative perspective on the diverse processes of colonization and their effects on colonial populations, both native and settler. Pezzarossi draws on a variety of theoretical approaches in his work, including postcolonial, practice and new materialist theories. He is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of seemingly incompatible approaches, namely postcolonial and new materialist/posthuman theoretical perspectives, as part of crafting a more inclusive, holistic theoretical framework that is positioned to better account for the wide variety of influences, motivations and causes (both human and nonhuman) driving the unfolding of colonial encounters. 12
John Ronquillo
School of Public Policy
University of Maryland
John C. Ronquillo, PhD, is the founding director of the Institute for Public Leadership and an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He joins UMD after nine years at the University of Colorado Denver where he co-led the effort to establish the university’s primary strategic goal of becoming an equity serving institution. He previously held a faculty appointment at DePaul University, where he also directed the MPA program. Ronquillo researches in the areas of nonprofit and public management, diversity, inclusion, and social equity, public service ethics and leadership, and Indigenous leadership and governance in Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. An award-winning teacher and academic leader, Ronquillo has taught extensively across PhD, Executive MPA, MPA, and BA programs. His research is published in Public Administration Review, the American Review of Public Administration, Decision Support Systems, Public Integrity, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, the Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences, and in numerous edited volumes. A highly engaged community partner, Ronquillo has served on several boards and commissions and was a candidate for elected office in Colorado twice. He served for six years on the board of directors for the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), and currently serves on the editorial board of the American Review of Public Administration and Public Integrity. 12
Abdul-Akeem Sadiq
School of Public Administration
University of Central Florida
Abdul-Akeem Sadiq, PhD, is a professor and the director of the master of public policy program in the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. He received his joint PhD in Public Policy from Georgia State University and Georgia Institute of Technology in 2009.
Sadiq’s research focuses on organizational disaster preparedness and mitigation, risk perceptions of man-made and natural hazards, community resilience to floods, collaborative governance, and human trafficking. In 2014, Dr. Sadiq was awarded the NSF Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Fellowship, and six years later was selected to mentor two Next Gen fellows. He has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Sadiq has published 54 peer-reviewed articles, one book, and several book chapters. His publications have appeared in several top journals including Ecological Economics, Risk Analysis, Public Administration Review, Nonprofit Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Natural Hazards Review.
Sadiq has over a decade of teaching experience both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His teaching interests include public administration, emergency management, homeland security, public policy, terrorism, and public safety.
Sadiq is the chair of American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) section on emergency and crisis management. Dr. Sadiq is a member of the editorial boards of the Public Administration Review, the International Journal of Public Administration, as well as three other journals.
Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
Carla Jackie Sampson is a clinical professor of healthcare management and public service, the academic director for the online health administration masters, and the MPA Health Policy and Management Program at NYU Wagner. She has more than thirty years of management experience in different business sectors in Trinidad and Tobago and the US. She teaches management and leadership, strategy, human resources management, and a healthcare simulation. Her research interests include healthcare workforce policy, the impact of structural racism on the social determinants of health, and anchor mission strategy development. She is the co-editor of Human Resources in Healthcare: Managing for Success, fifth edition (Health Administration Press, 2021), and Fundamentals of Human Resources in Healthcare, third edition (Health Administration Press, 2023). She holds an MBA in healthcare management and an MS in healthcare financial management from Temple University, and PhD in public affairs–health services management and research from the University of Central Florida. She is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the editor of their quarterly journal, Frontiers of Health Services Management. She is a member of the board of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA). She is also the editor of the forthcoming publication “ESG in Healthcare”, which will be released this fall.
Carla Jackie Sampson
Junko Takeda
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Syracuse University
Junko Takeda is a professor in history, chair of Maxwell School's program in citizenship and civic engagement, and a Daicoff faculty fellow. She researches and teaches the histories of early modern citizenship, globalization, revolutions, migration, displacement and disease. Takeda has authored two books, Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean (Johns Hopkins, 2011), and The Other Persian Letters: Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700-1808 (Liverpool University Press, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020). She is currently completing two book projects, Avedik: Louis XIV's Armenian Prisoner: Incarceration and Disinformation in France's Early Empire, and Maria Yamada Guyomar de Pinha: The Half-Japanese IndoPortuguese Slave Who Sued the Compagnie des Indes. Her memoirin-progress, They Didn't Want Us Here: A Japanese-Korean American Memoir, explores inter-ethnic violence, anti-Asian racism, and her childhood experiences as a formerly undocumented immigrant. Takeda is the recipient of the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Society for French Historical Studies Research Award and a visiting research fellowship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. At Syracuse University, she has received the O'Hanley Faculty Scholar Award, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Research and Teaching, the Junior Meredith Teaching Recognition Award, and the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award.
Denise Thompson
John Jay College of Criminal Justice City University of New York
Professor Denise Thompson is the Director of the MPA in Inspection and Oversight and is an associate professor in the Department of Public Management, John Jay College, CUNY. She is a development studies scholar who has a Ph.D. in Public Administration. She has researched and published on disaster risk management, governance, and public policy issues related to disaster risk reduction issues affecting small island developing states (SIDS).
Since joining John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, in 2010, Professor Thompson has researched and published on public policy, disaster risk governance, disaster logistics and humanitarian response, disaster resilience, and sustainable development. She has conducted research on and policy work for several notable agencies, including the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), International Labor Organization (ILO), Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Environmental Solutions Limited (ESL)
Professor Thompson is the recipient of several awards including the Jeremy Collymore Award (inaugural winner) for Research in Humanitarian Response and Disaster Risk Management in the Caribbean. The award supports innovative and insightful research that improves emergency response and Disaster Risk Management (DRM) in the CDEMA Participating States.
Michael Woldemariam
School of Public Policy
University of Maryland
Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a senior fellow at the Center for International & Security Studies at Maryland. Woldemariam’s teaching and research interests are in African security studies, with a particular focus on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in a wide-range of peer-reviewed journals, most recently in Contemporary Security Policy and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. His popular essays have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Current History. His first book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. In addition to his scholarly work, Woldemariam has consulted with a number of international organizations, primarily on issues related to politics, governance, and security in the Greater Horn of Africa region. He holds a BA from Beloit College, and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University. Prior to joining SPP, Woldemariam was a faculty member at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and the director of its African Studies Center. He has also worked as a research specialist with Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program and held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Penn State’s African Research Center. In 2020-21, Woldemariam served on the Democratic staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship.
James E. Wright II
Askew School of Public Administration and Public Policy
Florida State University
James E. Wright II, PhD is an associate professor in the Askew School of Public Administration and Public Policy at Florida State University where his research specializes in policing, law enforcement agency management, and race. His research has examined the impacts of body cameras on racial disparities in policing, the impacts of providing public access to police misconduct allegations, police officer decision making during police stops, how physical appearance impacts use of force, and community protests, among other issues. Wright received his BA from the University of Southern California, his MA in public policy from Pepperdine University, an MA in theological studies from Liberty University, and a PhD in public administration and policy from American University.
Marisa Zapata
College of Urban and Public Affairs
Portland State University
Marisa Zapata, PhD, is an associate professor of land-use planning and director of the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative at Portland State University. She received her PhD in regional planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, her MUP in urban planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and BA in anthropology from Rice University.
As an educator, scholar, and planner, Zapata is committed to achieving spatially based social justice by preparing planners to act in the face of the uncertain and inequitable futures we face. She believes how we use land reflects our social and cultural values.
Dr. Zapata’s research explores three main questions: 1) How can we plan across deeply embedded cultural differences to produce just and sustainable places? 2) How can planners prepare places to act in the face of the multiple futures that may unfold in a given place? and 3) What are the most effective institutional arrangements between governments and civic society to collaborate regionally? She is especially concerned about equitable planning for uncertain futures in highly diverse communities. PSU’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative created Understanding Homelessness, a podcast that illuminates the underlying causes of homelessness, explains systems that perpetuate it, explores innovative solutions, and shares stories from those with lived experiences. Zapata talks with experts, including those with lived experience, on how to better understand and address homelessness.
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Yahong Zhang
School of Public Affairs and Administration
Rutgers University-Newark
Yahong Zhang received her PhD from the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University. She is an associate professor and the director of Rutgers Institute on AntiCorruption Studies (RIACS) in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA), Rutgers University–Newark. She previously served as the PhD program director and international program director in SPAA. She has maintained a research agenda in local government management and policy, leadership, anti-corruption, citizen participation, public administration education, and quantitative research methods. Her articles have appeared in American Review of Public Administration (ARPA), International Review of Administrative Sciences (IRAS), Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), Public Administration Review (PAR), Public Management Review (PMR), Public Performance and Management Review (PPMR), etc. Dr. Zhang has been an editorial board member for JPART, ARPA, Journal of Public Administration Education (JPAE), Chinese Public Administration Review (CPAR), and International Journal of Public Administration (IJPA). 12
