John Baj is currently a senior research associate in the Human Resource Policy Program at the Center for Governmental Studies. He has been involved in numerous projects focusing on the assessment of workforce development programs and has extensive experience with a variety of administrative databases and reporting systems. He is the author of several publications, including Building State Systems Based on Performance: The Workforce Development Experience—A Guide for States (National Governors' Assocation 1996), which he coauthored with Charles Trott.

Frank Bennici is a labor economist and senior research analyst at Westat. He received his Ph.D. in labor and human resources from Ohio State University. Dr. Bennici's research has focused on education, employment, training, welfare, disability, and vocational rehabilitation. He has been an author and coauthor on many technical reports from Westat to several federal agencies; his publications include Managing Expectations for Welfare to Work: The Realities of Servicing the Hardest to Serve (Westat 1999).

Daniel Friedlander was a labor economist who spent his entire 20-year professional career with the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) as a program evaluator. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and published over 50 reports, books, and articles during his tenure at MDRC. His most recent coauthored book was Five Years After: The Long-Term Effects of Welfare-to-Work Programs (Russell Sage Foundation 1996). He was a pioneer in multistage experimental designs and popularized the now-standard "subgroup analysis" that appears in almost every evaluation study. He also was an expert in developing performance standards for employment and training programs.

David H. Greenberg is a labor economist at the University of Maryland–Baltimore Campus (UMBC). Before coming to UMBC in 1982, he worked for the Rand Corporation, SRI International, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Much of his research focuses on the evaluation of government programs that are targeted at the low-income population, especially public assistance, employment, and training programs. He recently completed a guide for conducting and using cost analyses of employment and training programs, and is the coauthor of both the Digest of Social Experiments (Urban Institute Press 1998) and a textbook on cost-benefit analysis. He is currently coauthoring a supplement to the Digest.

Kellie Isbell, a research associate at Aguirre International in Bethesda, Maryland, has a master's degree in policy studies from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor of science degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her publications include "Involving Employers in Training: Best Practices" for the U.S. Department of Labor Evaluation Series and "Social Sector Reform Activity: Labor Market Reform and Private Pension Reform in Bulgaria" for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She is currently researching the effects of the transition to democracy and market economies on social benefits in Central and Eastern Europe.

Leslie O. Lawson currently serves as a partnership specialist for the U.S. Bureau of the Census, coordinating Census 2000 outreach and promotions in central Texas. Before joining the Census Bureau partnership team in 1998, Ms. Lawson conducted quantitative social welfare policy analysis and program evaluation with the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources and the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Texas at Austin. She has published on public assistance utilization patterns and policy, changing family demographics, and the labor force participation of women.

Duane E. Leigh is a professor of economics and the economics department chair at Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University in 1969, and he has held teaching and research positions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Virginia. In recent years, his research has centered on the training needs of two groups of adult workers: dislocated workers who require retraining to qualify for new jobs, and downsizing survivors who require retraining to cope with increased workplace responsibilities in their old jobs.

Robert I. Lerman is the director of the Human Resources Policy Center at the Urban Institute and professor of economics at American University. His research focuses on welfare programs, income inequality, child support, youth employment programs, fatherhood, and family structure. His recent article, "Reassessing the Trends in U.S. Earnings Inequality" (Monthly Labor Review 1997), was cowinner of the Lawrence Klein award.

Garth L. Mangum is Max McGraw Professor of Economics and Management Emeritus at the University of Utah. He served as research director of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower and as executive director of the President's Committee on Manpower during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and was involved in the passage and early administration of the anti-poverty and workforce development legislation of that era. He was an originator of the National Council on Employment Policy, served as its chairman for a time, and is currently its secretary-treasurer. He was cofounder with Sar Levitan of the Center for Social Policy Studies at George Washington University, director of the Institute for Human Resource Management at the University of Utah, and is currently a fellow of the Sar Levitan Center for Social Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

Stephen Mangum is senior associate dean for academic programs and professor of management and human resources at the Max M. Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. He has produced several publications, including Programs in Aid of the Poor (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) and With Heart and Mind: Social Policy Essays in Honor of Sar A. Levitan (W.E. Upjohn, 1996), both of which he coedited with Sar A. Levitan and Garth L. Mangum.

Demetra Smith Nightingale is a principal research associate in the Labor and Social Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she is director of the Welfare and Training Research Program. She is a nationally recognized expert in social policy and has for over 20 years focused her research on issues related to poverty and the alleviation of poverty. She serves on numerous advisory boards and task forces at the national, state, and local levels. She is coeditor with Robert Haveman of The Work Alternative: Welfare Reform and the Realities of the Job Market (Urban Institute Press 1995), and coauthor with C. Eugene Steuerle, Edward N. Gramlich, and Hugh Heclo of The Government We Deserve: Responsive Democracy and Changing Expectations (Urban Institute Press 1998).

Jodi Nudelman is currently a project leader with the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has conducted numerous short-term studies about the efficiency and effectiveness of the department's programs and policies. Her primary research interests include health care and welfare issues. Prior to this, she was a research analyst at Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.

Jerome A. Olson is a research scientist and chief economist at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas at Austin, where he provides quantitative and statistical expertise. Prior to coming to the Center in 1994, Dr. Olson was the associate director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Texas, where he developed databases and statistical procedures for analyzing changes in the Texas economy. Dr. Olson's research has been published in Texas Business Review, The Journal of Econometrics, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

Lisa Plimpton is a policy analyst at Center for Law and Social Policy, where she works on workforce development issues and tracks welfare policies in the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Prior to joining CLASP in 1997, she worked as a research assistant at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies and at Abt Associates, Inc. She has worked on program evaluations and policy analyses in the areas of welfare reform, workforce development, community development, and housing. She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and received an M.A. in policy studies from Johns Hopkins University.

Philip K. Robins is a professor of economics at the University of Miami. He is a widely published specialist in labor economics and the economis of family behavior and is considered an expert on the economic evaluation of social programs for low-income families. He is a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is a consultant to the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. His current research includes studying the economic effects of financial incentive programs for welfare recipients. Before coming to the University of Miami in 1982, he worked for SRI International and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Andrew M. Sum is a professor of economics at Northeastern University and the director of the Center for labor Market Studies in Boston. He has been involved with employment and training policymaking, planning, and evaluation at the local, state, and national level for nearly three decades. His recent research publications in this field include Literacy in the Labor Force (National Center for Education Statistics 1999); Poverty Ain't What It Used to Be: The Case for and Consequences of Redefining Poverty, with Neal Fogg and Garth Mangum (Sar Levitan Center for Social Policy Studies1999); and TheRoad Ahead: Emerging Threats to Workers, Families, and the Massachusetts Economy (The Teresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation 1999).

Charles E. Trott

John Trutko, a senior consultant to the Urban Institute and president of Capital Research Corporation, has worked for over 20 years as a policy analyst and program evaluation specialist. Mr. Trutko specializes in research studies in the employment, training, and welfare fields. He has directed a wide variety of program evaluation studies for federal and state agencies, as well as a number of leading foundations. Mr. Trutko holds a masters in economics from the University of Sussex (in England) and a B.A. in political science from the University of Rochester.

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