Dany Bahar is a fellow in the Global Economy and Development program. An Israeli and Venezuelan economist, he is also an associate at the Harvard Center for International Development. His research sits at the intersection of international economics and economic development. In particular, his research includes productivity dynamics, structural transformation, international trade, migration, innovation and the diffusion of knowledge and technology, with focus on relevant policy implications. His work has been published in top economic journals and he often contributes to media outlets in the United States and around the globe. He has worked and consulted for multilateral development organizations, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Bahar holds a B.A. in systems engineering from Universidad Metropolitana (Caracas, Venezuela), a M.A. in economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a M.P.A. in international development from Harvard Kennedy School and a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is also the director of the Brookings project “Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016” and co-director of another Brookings project, “Reconstituting Local Orders.” She is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa.

Felbab-Brown is the author of "The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It" (Hurst, 2016, forthcoming); "Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops, and Corruption" (Brookings Institution Press, 2017, forthcoming);  “Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan” (Brookings Institution Press, 2012) and “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs” (Brookings Institution Press, 2010). She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on these issues.

Among her recent publications are: “Who Pays for Peace in Colombia,” The Brookings Institution, September 29, 2016; “What’s the Best Way to Organize a Coalition around Countering Terrorism,” (with Seyom Brown), The Brookings Institution, June 7, 2016; “Blood and Faith in Afghanistan: A June 2016 Update,” The Brookings Institution, June 2016; “The Hits and Misses of Targeting the Taliban,” The New York Times, May 25, 2016; “Little to Gloat About,” The Cipher, April 3, 2016; “Breaking Bad in the Middle East and North Africa: Drugs, Militants, and Human Rights,” (with Sultan Barakat and Harold Trinkunas) The Brookings Institution, March 22, 2016; “The Global Poaching Vortex,” (with Bradley Porter), The Brookings Institution, March 2, 2016; “Safe in the City: Urban Spaces Are the New Frontiers of International Security,” The Brookings Institution, February 18, 2016; “Drugs and Drones: The Crime Empire Strikes Back,” Oxford University's Remote Warfare Blog, February 18, 2016; “Cuidado: The Inescapable Necessity of Better Law Enforcement in Mexico,” LSE, February 2016; and "No Easy Exit: Drugs and Counternarcotics Policies in Afghanistan," The Brookings Institution, April 2015.

Felbab-Brown received her doctorate in political science from MIT and her bachelor’s from Harvard University.

Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). She served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on well-being metrics and policy in 2012-13, and received a research scholar of the year award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies for 2014. Graham, born in Lima, Peru, has an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University. Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

She is the author of Happiness for All? Unequal Lives and Hopes in Pursuit of the American Dream (Princeton University Press, 2017); The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being (Brookings, 2011; published in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and paperback); Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (Oxford University Press, 2009; published in Chinese, Portuguese and paperback); Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies (with Stefano Pettinato, Brookings, 2002; published in Spanish); Private Markets for Public Goods: Raising the Stakes in Economic Reform (Brookings, 1998); Safety Nets, Politics and the Poor: Transitions to Market Economies (Brookings, 1994); Peru's APRA (Rienner, 1992); Improving the Odds: Political Strategies for Institutional Reform in Latin America (co-author, IDB, 1999); and A Half Penny on the Dollar: The Future of Development Aid, with Michael O'Hanlon (Brookings, 1997). She is the editor, with Eduardo Lora, of Paradox and Perceptions: Quality of Life in Latin America (Brookings, 2009); with Susan Collins, of the Brookings Trade Forum 2004: Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality (Brookings, 2006); and, with Nancy Birdsall, of New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World (Brookings, 1999), and Beyond Trade-Offs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America (Brookings/IDB, 1988). She is the author of articles in journals including the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Population Economics, the World Bank Research Observer, Health Affairs, Health Economics, the Journal of Socio-Economics, World Economics, Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Development Studies, the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, World Development, the Journal of Happiness Studies, and of numerous chapters in edited volumes, including the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. She is senior editor of Behavioral Science and Policy, and an associate editor at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and on the editorial boards of numerous other economic journals. She served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on well-being metrics and policy in 2012-13, and received a Distinguished Research Fellow award for significant contribution to the field from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies for 2014.

Samantha Gross is a fellow in the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate. Her work is focused on the intersection of energy, environment, and policy, including climate policy and international cooperation, energy efficiency, unconventional oil and gas development, regional and global natural gas trade, and the energy-water nexus.

Gross has more than 20 years of experience in energy and environmental affairs.  She has been a visiting fellow at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, where she authored work on clean energy cooperation and on post-Paris climate policy. She was director of the Office of International Climate and Clean Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. In that role, she directed U.S. activities under the Clean Energy Ministerial, including the secretariat and initiatives focusing on clean energy implementation and access and energy efficiency. Prior to her time at the Department of Energy, Gross was director of integrated research at IHS CERA. She managed the IHS CERA Climate Change and Clean Energy forum and the IHS relationship with the World Economic Forum. She also authored numerous papers on energy and environment topics and was a frequent speaker on these topics. She has also worked at the Government Accountability Office on the Natural Resources and Environment team and as an engineer directing environmental assessment and remediation projects.

Gross holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, a Master of Science in environmental engineering from Stanford, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley.

Michael Hansen is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy. A labor economist by training, he has conducted original research on the teacher quality, value-added measurement, teacher evaluation, and teacher responses to incentives and accountability using state longitudinal data systems. Other areas of research include school turnaround and STEM learning. Findings from Hansen’s research have received media coverage from prominent outlets including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Education Week. His work has also been published in peer-reviewed research journals including American Economic Review, Education Finance and Policy, Economica, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, among others. Hansen has worked as principal investigator or co-PI on a range of contracts and grants with a variety of funders, including the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and Teach For America. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington.

Ron Haskins is a Senior Fellow and holds the Cabot Family Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he co-directs the Center on Children and Families. He is also a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and was the President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in 2016. Haskins is the co-author of Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for Rigor and Evidence in Social Policy (2015) and the author of Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (2006). Beginning in 1986, he spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee and was subsequently appointed to be the Senior Advisor to President Bush for Welfare Policy. In 1997, Haskins was selected by the National Journal as one of the 100 most influential people in the federal government.  He and his colleague Isabel Sawhill were recently awarded the Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science for being champions of the public good and advocates for public policy based on social science research. Haskins was recently appointed by Speaker Paul Ryan to co-chair the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission. He lives with his wife in Rockville, Maryland and has four grown children and two grandchildren.

John Hudak is deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies. His research examines questions of presidential power in the contexts of administration, personnel, and public policy. Additionally, he focuses on campaigns and elections, legislative-executive interaction, and state and federal marijuana policy.

John’s 2016 book, Marijuana: A Short History, offers a unique, up-to-date profile of how cannabis emerged from the shadows of counterculture and illegality to become a serious, even mainstream, public policy issue and source of legal revenue for both businesses and governments. In it, he describes why attitudes and policy have changed, and what those changes mean for marijuana's future place in society.

His 2014 Presidential Pork: White House Influence over the Distribution of Federal Grants demonstrates that pork-barrel politics occurs beyond the halls of Congress. Presidents capitalize on their discretionary funding authority to target federal dollars to swing states in advance of presidential elections. His other work explores how agency staffing, expertise, and institutional structure facilitate or hinder presidential power and influence. This research explores the balance between political control and bureaucratic expertise in the delivery of public policy.

John’s work has been recognized for its quality and contribution by the Midwest Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association’s Presidency Research Group. His work has been supported by institutions including the National Science Foundation.

Prior to joining Brookings, John served as the program director and as a graduate fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He holds a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University.

Elizabeth Kneebone is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and co-author of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America (Brookings Press, 2013). Her work primarily focuses on urban and suburban poverty, metropolitan demographics, and tax policies that support low-income workers and communities. In Confronting Suburban Poverty In America she and co-author Alan Berube address the changing geography of metropolitan poverty and offer pragmatic solutions for reforming and modernizing the nation’s policy and practice framework for alleviating poverty and increasing access to opportunity.

Kneebone has authored a number of Brookings reports, including “The Great Recession and Poverty in Metropolitan America,” “Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment,” and “Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to Benefit Families and Places.” She served as co-author on several other reports, including “The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s,” “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America,” and “Responding to the New Geography of Poverty: Recent Trends in the Earned Income Tax Credit.”

Prior to joining Brookings, Kneebone worked as a research project manager for IFF (formerly the Illinois Facilities Fund), where her work assessed the geographic distribution of need for services and programs targeted to low-income people and places. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and a bachelor’s degree in history from Indiana University.

Joshua Meltzer is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies where he teaches international trade law. Meltzer is a reviewer for the Journal of Politics and Law. At Brookings, Meltzer works on international trade law and policy issues with a focus on the World Trade Organization and large free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Specific areas of focus include digital trade and trade and climate change. Meltzer also works on financing for sustainable infrastructure. He has testified on trade issues before the U.S. Congress, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the European Parliament. Prior to joining Brookings, Meltzer was posted as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. where he was responsible for trade, climate and energy issues and prior to that he was a trade negotiator in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Meltzer has appeared in print and news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg, The Asahi Shimbun, The Economist, and China Daily. Meltzer holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and law and commerce degrees from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Meltzer is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution.

Adele Morris is a senior fellow and policy director for Climate and Energy Economics at the Brookings Institution. Her expertise and interests include the economics of policies related to climate change, energy, natural resources, and public finance. She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress, where she spent a year as a Senior Economist covering energy and climate issues. Before the JEC, Adele served nine years with the U.S. Treasury Department as its chief natural resource economist, working on climate, energy, agriculture, and radio spectrum issues. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she was the lead U.S. negotiator on land use and forestry issues in the international climate change treaty process. Prior to joining the Treasury, she served as the senior economist for environmental affairs at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. She began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she conducted regulatory oversight of agriculture and natural resource agencies. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Utah, and a B.A. from Rice University.

Jonathan D. Pollack is the Interim SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies in the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. Between 2012 and 2014, he served as director of the John L. Thornton China Center. Prior to joining Brookings in 2010, he was professor of Asian and Pacific Studies and chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. He previously worked at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where he served in various senior research and management positions, including chairman of the political science department, corporate research manager for international policy and senior advisor for international policy.

Pollack’s principal research interests include Chinese national security strategy; U.S.-China relations; U.S. strategy in Asia and the Pacific; Korean politics and foreign policy; Asian international politics; and nuclear weapons and international security. He received his master's and doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan, and was a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University. He has taught at Brandeis University, the Rand Graduate School of Policy Studies, University of California Los Angeles, and the Naval War College. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and an emeritus member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control, a standing committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pollack has authored or edited over two dozen books and research monographs, and has contributed to numerous edited volumes and leading professional journals in the United States, Asia, and Europe on China’s international strategies, the political and security dynamics of the Korean Peninsula, East Asian international politics and U.S. foreign, and defense policies in Asia and the Pacific. His publications include: "Strategic Surprise? U.S.-China Relations in the Early 21st Century" (2004); "Korea-The East Asian Pivot" (2006); and "Asia Eyes America: Regional Perspectives on U.S. Asia-Pacific Strategy in the 21st Century" (2007). His latest book, "No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security," was published in 2011 by Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies; the Asan Institute of Policy Studies published a revised Korean language edition in 2012. His current research, to be published as Endangered Order: Revisionism and Strategic Risk in Northeast Asia, focuses on the strategic ambitions and fears of the leaders of China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, and their consequences for the future regional order.

Jonathan Rauch is the author of six books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing editor of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His many Brookings publications include the 2015 ebook Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy, as well as research on political parties, marijuana legalization, health care, and more.

In 2013, he published Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul, a memoir of his struggle with his sexuality, brought out as an ebook from The Atlantic Books. His previous book was Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, published in 2004 by Times Books (Henry Holt). Although much of his writing has been on public policy, he has also written on topics as widely varied as adultery, agriculture, economics, gay marriage, height discrimination, biological rhythms, number inflation, and animal rights.

His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from 1998 to 2010 in National Journal. Among the many other publications for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, The Advocate, The Daily, and others.

In his 1994 book Demosclerosis—revised and republished in 2000 as Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working—he argues that America’s government is becoming gradually less flexible and effective with time, and suggests ways to treat the malady. His 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (published by the University of Chicago Press) defends free speech and robust criticism, even when it is racist or sexist and even when it hurts. In 1992 his book The Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan questioned the then-conventional wisdom that Japan was fundamentally different from the West.

Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and graduated in 1982 from Yale University. In addition to the National Magazine Award, his honors include the 2010 National Headliner Award, one of the industry’s most venerable prizes. In 1996 he was awarded the Premio Napoli alla Stampa Estera for his coverage, in The Economist, of the European Parliament. In 2011 he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association prize for excellence in opinion writing. His articles appear in The Best Magazine Writing 2005 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 and 2007. He has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs. He does not like shrimp.

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, policy director of the Center on Children and Families, and editor-in-chief of the Social Mobility Memos blog. His research focuses on social mobility, inequality, and family change. Prior to joining Brookings, he was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister.

Richard’s publications for Brookings include Saving Horatio Alger: Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream (2014), Character and Opportunity (2014), The Glass Floor (2013), and The Parenting Gap (2014). He is also a contributor to The Atlantic, National Affairs, Democracy Journal, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Richard is the author of John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.

His previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; director of futures at the Work Foundation; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year.

Richard earned a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University. With co-author Isabel V. Sawhill, he was recipient of the “Best Policy Paper” 2014 ranking in the University of Pennsylvania’s annual Think Tank Awards.

Molly Reynolds is a fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. She studies Congress, with an emphasis on how congressional rules and procedure affect domestic policy outcomes. Her current research explores exceptions to the filibuster rule for particular measures in the U.S. Senate, such as the procedures for considering the yearly budget resolution, trade agreements, and plans for closing military bases. She finds that these special rules are created and used when doing so is in the current political interest of the Senate's majority party. In addition, she studies the congressional budget process, including the use and consequences of filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bills. Other projects also include work on the role of issue advertising in legislative politics, especially health policy, and on how individual senators use obstructive tactics to gain political benefits from the legislative process. Reynolds received her Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan and her A.B. in government from Smith College, and previously served as a senior research coordinator in the Governance Studies program at Brookings. In addition, she has served as an instructor at George Mason University.

Martha Ross is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. Her work focuses on human capital and strategies to increase the skills, employment, and earnings of current and future workers. Her Brookings publications have included reports on employment trends among young adults, the healthcare workforce, and recommendations on improving educational options and career pathways for low-income or low-skilled workers. Prior to joining Brookings, she was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

She is the author of “Strengthening Educational and Career Pathways for DC Youth” and has co-authored or contributed to numerous other publications such as, “The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults,” “Drive! Moving Tennessee’s Automotive Sector up the Value Chain,” “Envisioning Opportunity: Three Options for a Community College in Washington, DC,” “Reducing Poverty in Washington, D.C. and Rebuilding the Middle Class from Within,” “Leaders Among Us: Developing a Community Health Worker Program in Washington, D.C.,” “Health Status and Access to Care among Low-Income Washington, DC Residents,” “Thin the Soup or Shorten the Line: Washington Area Nonprofits Adapt to Uncertain Times,” and “Calling 211: Enhancing the Washington Region's Safety Net After 9/11.” She was detailed temporarily to the Council of the District of Columbia in 2007 to assist the Committee on Workforce Development and Government Operations.

Prior to joining Brookings, Martha was a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she focused on welfare policy. She has a master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College.

Vanessa Williamson is a Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. She studies the politics of redistribution, with a focus on attitudes about taxation. She is the author of the new book Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes. Bringing together national survey data with in-depth interviews, Read My Lips presents a surprising picture of tax attitudes in the United States. Americans view taxpaying as a civic responsibility and moral obligation. But they worry that others are shirking their duties, in part because the experience of taxpaying misleads Americans about who pays taxes and how much. Upending the idea of Americans as knee-jerk opponents of taxes, Read My Lips examines American taxpaying as an act of political faith. Ironically, however, the depth of the American civic commitment to taxpaying makes the failures of the tax system, perceived and real, especially potent frustrations. While Americans see taxpaying as a moral commitment to the community, they tend to underrate the tax contributions made by the poor – a mistake that is reinforced by the taxpaying process. Moreover, though most believe the rich need to pay more in taxes, their experiences of the tax system leave them misinformed about the tax reforms that would achieve this end. Williamson is also the author, with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, which examines how the Tea Party pushed the Republican Party farther to the right. The book was named one of the ten best political books of the year in the New Yorker. Her other work includes examinations of the political origins of the state Earned Income Tax Credit, the electoral effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the conditions in which voters have supported state tax increases, and the factors predicting protests against police brutality.

She has testified before Congress and appeared on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” and Al Jazeera America. She has written a variety of outlets including, including a recent Op-Ed on Donald Trump’s non-payment of taxes in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, a Teen Vogue piece on the defense of democracy in America, as well as for The Atlantic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and her hometown newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. Her work has also been cited by the Economist, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and on National Public Radio, among other sources. Williamson previously served as the Policy Director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. She received her Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy from Harvard University. She has a master’s degree from NYU's Institute of French Studies, and received her B.A. in French language and literature from NYU.