Barry Bluestone is the Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy, the founding Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and the founding Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Before assuming these posts, Bluestone spent 12 years at the University of Massachusetts at Boston as the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Political Economy and as a Senior Fellow at the University's John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs. He was the Founding Director of UMass Boston's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. Before coming to UMass in the Fall of 1986, he taught economics at Boston College for 15 years and was Director of the University's Social Welfare Research Institute. Professor Bluestone was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1974.

At the Dukakis Center, Bluestone has led research projects on housing, local economic development, state and local public finance, and the manufacturing sector in Massachusetts. At the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, he has co-taught the Open Classroom Policy Series, a graduate seminar on critical social issues open free to the public each semester. He has also been part of the Policy School team developing our new Masters Program in Urban and Regional Policy.

Full Biography | Phone:(617) 373-7870 | Email: b.bluestone [at] neu.edu

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Stephanie Pollack
Associate Director of Research

Stephanie Pollack is Associate Director of the Dukakis Center, overseeing the Center's research agenda as well as conducting her own research projects in the areas of transportation policy and sustainable and equitable development. She also serves as a Professor of Practice in the Law, Policy and Society program, teaching core courses in public policy strategies and law and legal reasoning.

Pollack is a nationally-known environmental attorney with more than 25 years of policy and advocacy experience in the environmental, energy, smart growth, environmental health, and transportation fields. Before coming to Northeastern in 2004, Pollack was a senior executive and attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, New England's leading environmental advocacy organization. During her two-decade career at CLF, Pollack worked on issues including smart growth and sustainable development, affordable housing, childhood lead poisoning, and transportation and transit policy and planning.

Pollack splits her time between Northeastern and the strategic environmental consulting firm BlueWave Strategies LLC, where she advises non-profit, institutional and for-profit clients on smart growth, transit-oriented development, and other "green" real estate projects. Pollack is also active in public policy issues affecting sustainable development, environmental and energy policy and transportation in Massachusetts. She co-chaired Governor Deval Patrick's 2006 Transition Working Group on Transportation and currently serves on the boards of the Alliance for Healthy Housing, Boston Society of Architects, Charles River Watershed Association and The Medical Foundation.

Pollack received both a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Public Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a JD from Harvard Law School.

Phone:(617) 373-8341 | Email: s.pollack [at] neu.edu

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Heather Seligman
Associate Director of Administration and Finance

Heather began her tenure at the Dukakis Center in the fall of 2000. As our Associate Director of Administration and Finance, she is currently responsible for all grant financials, with annual funds over $2 million. Additionally, she is in charge of the Dukakis Center operations, responsible for project management, budgeting, accounting, human resources, and payroll systems. She works closely with the Barry Bluestone on strategic planning and development for the Center. She also assists with marketing and management of events and conferences.

Seligman also serves as Chief Financial Officer for the School of School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. Similar to her role for the Dukakis Center, she functions in the same capacity, managing operations and projects for the School. In May 2008, Seligman completed her Masters in Business Administration. During the course of her academic experience, she discovered her interests lie in entrepreneurship, which is closely related to her current position and the attitudes of the Center. She currently lives near the water in Chelsea, MA which she shares with her yellow lab, Ivy.

Phone:(617) 373-3645 | Email: h.seligman [at] neu.edu

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Alan Clayton-Matthews

Alan Clayton-Matthews is Professor and Director of Quantitative Methods in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. He spent his 2007 sabbatical leave at the Dukakis Center. At the Center, he was the chief designer of the Labor Market Assessment Tool (LMAT) and has served as a consultant on a number of projects including "Staying Power: The Future of Manufacturing in Massachusetts".

Clayton-Matthews is co-editor of Massachusetts Benchmarks, a joint publication of the University of Massachusetts and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that presents timely information and analysis about the performance of the Massachusetts economy. He is also a Director of the New England Economic Project, a group of economists and managers from academia, business, and government who study and forecast the New England economy.

Previously, Clayton-Matthews has worked as an economist and policy analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Social Welfare Research Institute at Boston College, and DRI/McGraw-Hill. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston College.

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Terry Dolan

Terry Dolan, Executive Assistant

Terry Dolan is the Executive Assistant for the Dukakis Center and Policy School. Her background includes 25 years working in the public sector for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts initially as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of Public Health, with a focus on fiscal and management issues at the public health hospitals. She joined the State House staff of Governor Michael Dukakis in 1985 as Director of Administration for the Executive Office of the Governor, a position to which she was subsequently re-appointed by Governors Weld, Cellucci, Swift, Romney, and Patrick.

Active in community affairs, she serves as an officer and member of the Executive Board of the Lower Mills Civic Association, Vice President of the Lower Mills Village Association, a member of the Community Advisory Council for the restoration of the Lower Neponset River, and the Civic Engagement subcommittee of the Boston Civic Summit working group. Additionally, she is a Playspace Volunteer with the Horizons for Homeless Children Initiative.

A graduate of Regis College, she holds an MBA from Simmons College. Terry lives in the Baker Square complex in Dorchester Lower Mills, the site of nineteenth and early twentieth century mill buildings of the former Baker Chocolate Company, which have been rehabbed and restored as housing.

Phone:(617) 373-7870 | Email: t.dolan [at] neu.edu

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Laurie Dopkins
Senior Research Associate
Focus Areas: Non-Profit Performance and Capacity Building | Evaluation & Outcomes Measurement

Laurie Dopkins is Senior Research Associate at the Dukakis Center and Director of Academic Programs for the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. Immediately prior to moving to Boston in 2008, Laurie was Associate Research Professor at George Mason University where she taught evaluation research methods and led community-based action research projects involving collaborations between nonprofit organizations, government agencies, businesses, private foundations, and multiple units within the university.

Before joining the faculty at Mason, Dopkins had her own consulting firm in Atlanta where she worked with public sector agencies, foundations, and nongovernmental organizations on policy research and program evaluation in a wide range of areas including children and youth, community and economic development, maternal and child health, education, and immigration. Dopkins has broad experience in the management, analysis and evaluation of policies and programs, including the development of accountability and outcomes monitoring systems. She has specialized in developing collaborative evaluation techniques that enhance evaluation capacity and utilization among diverse stakeholder groups, including policymakers and program managers, service providers and clients, community leaders and advocates.

Dopkins has published dozens of evaluation and research reports for foundations, government organizations, nonprofit agencies, and community groups. Her specific areas of interest in the field of evaluation are social indicators, organizational learning, program theory and logic models, evaluation capacity building, evidence based policy and practice, and the translation of knowledge to action. Dopkins received her Ph.D in Sociology from Rutgers University in 1984. She lives in Brookline with her husband, Steve Vallas, and has two grown daughters, Rebecca and Kaitlin.

Phone:(617) 373-2889 | Email: l.dopkins [at] neu.edu

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Michael E. Lake
Senior Associate
Executive Director, World Class cities Partnership

Michael is the Executive Director of the World Class Cities Partnership, headquartered at Northeastern University. As Executive Director, Michael establishes and develops relationships with municipal governments and universities around the world, creating a global network of partner cities dedicated to implementing public policy to address shared challenges facing 21st century cities. Michael's career in public service has spanned from serving two United States Presidents as Special Assistant for White House Operations to serving the former Prime Minister of Ireland as a policy research analyst and most recently serving as Director of Development for United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley.

A native of Melrose, Massachusetts, Michael was the first and only graduate in history from Northeastern University or the state of Massachusetts to have completed five undergraduate degrees simultaneously. He graduated summa cum laude studying Finance, Political Science, Communications, Entrepreneurship and Management Information Systems. Michael also serves as a Board member for the Neighborhood Organization for Affordable Housing (NOAH), Boston Representative for the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Cities Network, a member of the Boston Public Library's Young Professionals Committee, the Executive Director of Northeastern's College of Business Talent Development Committee, an Alumni Mentor and is involved in a number of other charitable organizations.

Phone:(617) 373-7905 | Email: m.lake [at] neu.edu

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John Sarvey
Senior Associate, Marketing and Development
Focus Areas: Non-Profit Performance and Capacity Building
Executive Director, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs

John has over 18 years of experience in non-profit management and higher education. He worked for 12 years with City Year, a national service program that engages young adults for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. John served twice as a local City Year executive director (San Jose/Silicon Valley and Boston) and as a national vice president. He developed several national program models at City Year including the Whole School, Whole Child model for transforming public schools and improving the academic, socio-emotional, and civic development of students.

Prior to City Year, John worked for the Campus Outreach Outreach Opportunity League, a national organization that promotes and supports college student involvement in community service. John has visited over 300 colleges and universities and provided consulting to dozens on how to build and strengthen student-led community service programs.

John serves as a trustee of the Hyams Foundation. He previously served on the boards of Massachusetts Stand for Children, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, Campus Outreach Opportunity League, the Coro National Alumni Association, and KaBoom!

John is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs.

Phone: (617) 373-4049 | Email: j.sarvey [at] neu.edu

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Jay Kaufman
Director, Center for Leadership and Public Life

Jay Kaufman has served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives since January 1995 and now chairs the legislature's Committee on Revenue. He had, for two terms, chaired the Committee on Public Service and led the effort to develop and pass major pension reform initiatives.

His primary legislative interests are education, health care, campaign reform, environmental protection, and social and economic justice. He led the fight to pass and implement the state's campaign finance reform law, and has chaired special task forces on medical records privacy, the social and ethical implications of genetic technology, and alternatives to property taxes to fund public schools. During his freshman term, he broke a six-year logjam to win passage of the Rivers Act, a major environmental protection bill. He is currently leading the effort to pass the Act for Healthy Massachusetts, a bill that would encourage the substitution of safer alternatives to commonly-used toxic chemicals. He has sponsored legislation aimed at tax fairness and has consistently secured major budget increases for METCO, the state's premier racial desegregation program.

His monthly "OPEN HOUSE" public policy forum, now in its fourteenth season, has been recognized with the prestigious Beacon Award as the nation's best televised government relations series. Jay was appointed founding director of Northeastern University's new center for Leadership and Public Life where he now teaches and leads leadership development workshops for those in or aspiring to public life.

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Senior Research Associates

Bonnie Heudorfer

Bonnie Heudorfer is an independent consultant specializing in housing, strategic planning and community development. Her clients include financial institutions, municipalities and government agencies, academic institutions, and advocacy organizations. She provides a broad spectrum of services, including housing needs assessments, affordable housing plans and implementation strategies, program evaluations, survey research, and market analyses. In addition, she assists communities in the development of local and regional housing partnerships.

At the Dukakis Center, Bonnie has been a co-author of the Greater Boston Housing Report Card series, a comprehensive annual assessment of the progress Greater Boston is making toward providing housing opportunities for all of its citizens. Previously, she worked on the Center's Weston Housing Survey. Bonnie has also worked on many other projects including, "Taking the Initiative: A Guidebook on Creating Local Affordable Housing Strategies," a comprehensive guidebook, commissioned by Citizens' Housing and Planning Association and funded by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, to provide assistance to communities attempting to expand their affordable housing options and "Massachusetts Housing Affordability Review: The Skyrocketing Costs of Homeownership in Massachusetts," a housing affordability gap analysis, by community, prepared for 2000-2002.

She has served as a consultant to CHAPA, the Governor's Task Force on MGL Chapter 40B, and as a consultant to the Massachusetts Housing Partnership Fund and to a number of Massachusetts cities and towns.

Prior to establishing her own consulting practice in the spring of 2001, Bonnie was BankBoston's Director of Community Reinvestment and Fair Lending, and before that, Director of Residential Development for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. She was the co-founder of the Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development and served as the first Executive Director of the Boston Housing Partnership. She serves on the board of directors and executive committee of Citizens' Housing and Planning Association, of which she is a past president, and is the Chair of the Town of Harvard's Housing Partnership. A graduate of the University of Connecticut, Bonnie received her master's degree in City and Regional Planning from the Pratt Institute.

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Shelley Kimelberg

Shelley McDonough Kimelberg

Shelley McDonough Kimelberg is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Senior Research Associate at the Dukakis Center. Her research focuses on economic development, urban poverty, and social policy. Shelley has served as a principal researcher on the Center's Economic Development Partnership initiative since 2004. Her primary responsibilities include managing the collection of market data from the private sector, and the development of the Municipal Self-Assessment Tool. This work comprised a significant portion of her doctoral dissertation, Risky Business: An Examination of Firm Location Decisions and Their Implications for Inner Cities.

Prior to her arrival at Northeastern, Shelley spent seven years working in knowledge management for a global management consulting firm. She received her Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. degrees from Harvard University.

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Eleanor G. White

Eleanor G. White is President of Housing Partners, Inc. and a founding member of the Center's World Class Collaborative. She serves as Co-Chair of the Commonwealth Housing Task Force and along with Barry Bluestone and Ted Carman was co-author of the research that led to the successful passage of Chapter 40R and 40S housing legislation in Massachusetts.

She has worked in the fields of affordable housing development, property asset management, and public administration since 1967. She was deputy director and chief of operations at the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency from 1983 to 1995. Previously she held a variety of positions at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1967 to 1983. She has served on a number of housing boards and commissions and has lectured widely on housing and real estate. She has won many awards for her work on affordable housing development.

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Research Associates

Chase Billingham, Research Associate

Telephone: (617) 373-7870

E-mail: c.billingham@neu.edu

Chase Billingham is a Research Associate at the Dukakis Center and a graduate student in the Northeastern University Department of Sociology. He received a B.A. in sociology and French from Tulane University in 2006 and an M.A. in sociology from Northeastern in 2008.

At the Dukakis Center, Chase's research has focused on municipal finance, regional housing policy, and local economic development. Most recently, he collaborated with Barry Bluestone and Tim Davis on From Paradigm to Paradox: Understanding Greater Boston's New Housing Market. This most recent installment of the annual Greater Boston Housing Report Card series noted the troubling presence of a "housing paradox", whereby housing prices and rents in the region remain too high, making housing unaffordable for a large proportion of the population, yet are falling so quickly that the housing market cannot properly stabilize.

He worked with Barry Bluestone, Don Walsh, and Lauren Nicoll on Staying Power, the Center's recent assessment of the current state of and potential opportunities for the manufacturing sector in Massachusetts. He was a co-author, as well, of The Potential for Uneven Economic Development across Massachusetts Municipalities: An Analysis of the Role of Property Tax and State Local Aid. This Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper compared recent economic trends in older industrial cities and rapidly growing communities in Massachusetts, highlighting the deleterious effects that an eroding tax base can have on the ability of cities and towns to provide municipal services, and showing how state intervention through the provision of local aid can mitigate the potential for uneven development. Out of this research, Chase also joined Barry Bluestone in writing "The Property Tax and the Fortunes of Older Industrial Cities," which appeared in the January 2008 issue of Land Lines, the quarterly journal of the Lincoln Institute.

Chase's academic interests are in urban sociology and the sociology of education. He is currently investigating the moderate racial resegregation that has taken place in the Boston Public School system over the past several years and considering the ways in which the development of new school choice options, particularly charter schools, have contributed to shifting racial patterns in schools. More broadly, he is beginning new research into the ways that school choice and racial attitudes may affect residential patterns, neighborhood sentiment, and neighboring behavior.

He lives in Dorchester.

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Jessica Herrmann, Research Associate

Telephone: (617) 373-7103

E-mail: j.herrmann@neu.edu

Jessica Herrmann is a full-time Research Associate at the Dukakis Center. She graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University with a B.A. in Economics in May 2009.

Jessica first became interested in affordable housing and the current foreclosure crisis when she spent the summer of 2008 working at Boston Community Capital. As an intern she conducted research in an effort to better understand the mortgage crisis. This involved everything from collecting the interest rates of foreclosed mortgages to conducting site evaluations of properties that had been foreclosed upon. Jessica expanded her initial research at Boston Community Capital into a senior honors thesis on the topic of foreclosures in the Boston area. Her thesis research explored the maintenance of properties by banks after the properties had been foreclosed and examined the differences in the spatial clustering of foreclosures the current crisis to that of the foreclosure crisis in the early 1990s. She was awarded highest honors for her thesis research by the economics department. In addition to her thesis, she wrote an article on the foreclosure crisis entitled "American Nightmare: Understanding the Mortgage Crisis", which was published in Discourse, an interdisciplinary journal at Tufts University.

Jessica continued her research on Boston housing at the Dukakis Center as a co-author of The Great Boston Housing Report Card 2009: Positioning Boston in a Post-Crisis World.

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Marc Horne, Research Associate

Telephone:(617) 373-7868

E-mail: m.horne@neu.edu

Marc has been a full-time research associate at the Dukakis Center since 2006. He attended UMass Lowell where he earned a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Regional Economic and Social Development.

At the the Dukakis Center, Marc's primary research has been focused on municipal economic development as part of the Dukakis Center's Economic Development Partnership. Marc has also assisted with research into housing, state and local finance, and the Massachusetts manufacturing industry. Marc is also the in-house GIS practitioner, producing maps for many center research projects. He is also assisting Stephanie Pollack with a research project on transit.

Marc's personal research interests include local and regional economic development policies, environmental ethics and regulation, the philosophy of social science, transportation and public transit, and urban design issues.

Marc is a life-long resident of Lowell, MA, where he serves on Lowell's Green Building Commission and the Citizen's Advisory Committee.

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Lauren Nicoll, Research Associate

Telephone: (617) 373-3110

E-mail:l.nicoll@neu.edu

Lauren Nicoll is a Research Associate at the Dukakis Center, currently working on projects focusing on Boston, non-profit capacity building, and transit-oriented development. Past projects include the Greater Boston Housing Report Card, Staying Power: Manufacturing in Massachusetts, and several others. Lauren earned her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Business Management from Drew University in Madison, NJ in 2004. She entered the PhD program at Northeastern in Sociology in the fall of 2005 and is working on her PhD. In the summer of 2008, Lauren served as a Rappaport Institute Public Policy Fellow, working at the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development in Somerville, MA on the topic of strengthening and growing the design industry. Lauren has taught research methods and social problems in the sociology department.

Lauren's academic interests include urban economic development, work and organizations, and globalization. In her free time, Lauren enjoys biking around Boston, trying new recipes, and traveling to visit family and friends.

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Senior Research Fellows

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Joan Fitzgerald

Joan Fitzgerald is the Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University. At the Dukakis Center, Joan brings prior experience and current forward-thinking research focusing on "green growth".

Her current research includes work on "Emerald Cities", a comprehensive research project that examines how U.S. and Western European cities address the interrelated issues of global warming, energy dependence and opportunities for green economic development. Based from the findings of her research, this potential includes building new technology-based industry clusters, improving the efficiency of production in existing manufacturing processes, and creating well-paying green jobs in construction, manufacturing, and entirely new advanced technology sectors.

Prior to her work on "Emerald Cities", Joan has written for several journals and regularly advises government officials on new "green-growth strategies". Her recent publications include her 2002 economic development book, Economic Revitalization: Strategies and Cases for City and Suburb, Moving Up in the New Economy (2006) and recent articles in the American Prospect focusing on green building and renewable energy.

Before coming to Northeastern University, Joan taught urban policy and public affairs at the New School University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University.

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Richard O'Bryant

Richard O'Bryant is Director of the John D. O'Bryant African-American Institute at Northeastern and an Assistant Professor of Political Science. At the Center, Richard helps coordinate activities with the Stony Brook Initiative and has developed a number of research proposals on the role of information technology on democratic process.

Professor O'Bryant's current teaching responsibilities include "Science, Technology and Public Policy", "Urban Policies and Politics, Current Issues in Cities" and "Suburbs and Economic Institutions and Analysis". O'Bryant is also co-director of the Political Science Experiential Education internship program. His recent publications include Low-Income Communities: Technological Strategies for Nurturing Community, Empowerment and Self-Sufficiency at a Low-Income Housing Development, a monograph published in 2005 in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's National Forum on Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Higher Education for the Public Good, and a review of Media Access: Social and Psychological Dimensions of a New Technology Use, published in February 2005 in the New Media and Society Journal. His current research interests are information technology and civic, social, and political participation.

Professor O'Bryant served as co-principal investigator of the Camfield Estates/MIT Project, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which included making wireless connectivity available to residents of Camfield Estates, located in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His professional experience also includes serving as a senior software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation (now HP-Compaq), a research associate at the William Monroe Trotter Institute, and former Director of the John D. O’Bryant Community Youth Center.

Born and raised in Boston, O'Bryant received his doctorate in 2004 in Urban and Regional Studies from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. O'Bryant also has a bachelor's degree in computer systems engineering from Howard University.

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Mary Huff Stevenson

Mary Huff Stevenson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Dukakis Center. Stevenson is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston and past Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs at UMB's John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies.

At the Dukakis Center, Stevenson has been a co-author with Barry Bluestone and Russell Williams of The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Stevenson has been widely published, and writes on a number of issues that complement her specific interests: urban poverty and labor market problems, the economic status of women, and the development of urban public institutions. She is the author of three other books, two of which were co-authored with Dukakis Center director Barry Bluestone: The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000) and Low Wages and the Working Poor published by the University of Michigan in 1973. Her solely authored book, Determinants of Low Wages for Women Workers, was published in 1984.

She has also written for a wide number of publications, including the Eastern Economics Journal, Borderlands of Economics: Essays in Honor of Daniel R. Fusfeld; For Crying out Loud: Women's Poverty in the United States; and for the Boston Observer, "The Dynamics of Labor Market Segmentation" and "Sex, Discrimination, and the Division of Labor."

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Don Walsh

Don Walsh was the Director of Community Relations and Economic Development for NSTAR, the region's electricity and gas distributor, since its formation in 1999 until 2005, and served as the Director of Economic Development for Boston Edison since 1991. He was responsible for the relationships between NSTAR and the 108 cities and towns comprising the company's service territory. As a result, he has a variety of real-world experiences built around the role of energy and energy delivery in municipalities. He has a strong background in economic development, particularly urban economic development, housing, and energy.

At the Center, Don was co-director of the research project that culminated in "Staying Power: The Future of Manufacturing in Massachusetts" and serves as co-chair of the Staying Power Task Force.

In addition to active participation in key private sector efforts to strengthen the Massachusetts economy, he was the founder of the Mass Alliance for Economic Development (MAED), which has become the primary source of real estate information for businesses considering a Massachusetts location. He was also the Founding President of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, one of the city's premier Community Development Corporations (CDCs); he is DBEDC's current president.

A graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, Walsh has a Master's Degree in Sociology from Northeastern University and an MBA from Harvard University.

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Russell Williams

Russell Williams is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts who specializes in urban, labor, and institutional economics. At Wheaton he teaches courses in urban economics, the economics of education, the economics of race, and macroeconomics. Williams received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which he attended after winning a Ford Foundation Fellowship. At the Dukakis Center, he has served as a Senior Research Associate working on a number of projects related to minority business enterprise and is a co-author, along with Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson of The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Williams' professional experience in economics includes previous positions with the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., the Regional Institute for Employment Policy, Abt Associates, and the William Monroe Trotter Institute at UMass Boston. He has contributed to a number of reports and studies dealing with urban economic development, the changing demographic makeup of Greater Boston, workforce training, and youth programs in the inner city. His academic and professional work has used a wide range of methodologies, ranging from interviews and focus group facilitation, to statistical analysis techniques including OLS, probit, and hazard analysis. His writings have been directed to a wide variety of audiences, from academicians to policy-makers to the general public.

In addition to his research, applied work, and teaching in economics, Williams' other professional experience includes nine years as Associate Director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc., where he managed 20 professional staff and oversaw operations with a cash flow of $3 million; and consultant work for AHEAD, Inc., an international health and development organization. Williams has volunteered in several capacities, including service as a member of the Board of Managers of the New England Home for Little Wanderers, as a member of the Advisory Board of the New England Advanced Studies Program (an enrichment program for high school students), as co-chair of Operation Big Vote-Boston, and as a member and subcommittee chairperson on the United Way of Massachusetts-Bay Social Services Allocations Review Committee. He has been listed in Who's Who in the East, and Who' s Who in American Education.

Williams has been a guest lecturer on numerous occasions addressing topics such as urban economics, economic inequality, and the economics of education. In 1996, he was a participant in a Children's Defense Fund-sponsored national teleconference on the relationships between economic development and the needs of black children.

In his spare time, Williams enjoys music and watching sports. He is a lifelong pianist, whose pre-college training included studies at South Carolina State University and Peabody Institute of Music (Baltimore). As an adult he served for two years as accompanist for New England Conservatory' s Community Services Program voice class. Williams lives in Central Massachusetts.

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Cassidy Carlson

Co-op, World Class Cities Partnership and Open Classroom Policy Series
Class of 2011, Economics with a Minor in Business Administration

Cassidy is serving on co-op with the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs for Fall Semester 2009. She is collaborating with Michael Lake on the World Class Cities Partnership and preparing modes of accessibility for the Northeastern University's Open Classroom Series.

In addition to her passion for advancing equitable economic development, during Red Sox season Cassidy can be found at Fenway Park managing a concession stand. And during the fall and winter months, as a New England Aquarium First Responder, she travels to the beach to help stranded marine life, such as seals.

Cassidy was born and raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts, although she spent her first year of pre-school in Kailua, Hawaii. She graduated from Wellesley High School in 2006 and was on the Northeastern University Dean's list in Fall 2006. She intends to continue to pursue a career in economics and business while maintaining an openness to enjoy the other non-academic pursuits which add to the richness of life and what she offers to her career.