Sebastian Sotelo is an associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research area of focus is international economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, his M.Res. from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and his B.A. from Universidad del Pacifico.
Expert Type: Grantee
Saravanan Kesavan
Saravanan Kesavan conducts research on supply chain management for retailers, with emphasis on benchmarking operational performance and management of retail store labor. His research topics include improving labor productivity, reducing employee turnover, forecasting performance, designing managerial incentives, and digitization. His research has appeared in Management Science, M&SOM, POM, and Harvard Business Review. He is a senior editor at POMS and an ad hoc reviewer at Management Science, M&SOM, and POMS. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Forbes, and other media outlets. Kesavan teaches retail operations and digital operations for MBA students. He has received the “MBA Teaching All Star” award seven times between 2007–2017 and the Weatherspoon Award for Teaching Excellence in the full-time MBA program in 2018. He worked for several years at i2 Technologies, where he helped clients deal with supply chain management issues. He has worked with a number of companies, including The Gap Inc., USAA, Lowe’s Cos., Belk, Texas Instruments Inc., and The Kroger Co. He received his doctorate in technology and operations management from Harvard Business School. He also has master’s and bachelor’s degrees in engineering from University of Massachusetts at Amherst and IIT Madras, India, respectively.
Samir Sonti
Samir Sonti is an assistant professor of urban studies at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. He has worked as a political organizer for the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, and as a researcher for UNITE HERE, a union representing hospitality workers in the United States and Canada. Prior to his current position at CUNY, he served as a special advisor on the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. Sonti holds a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied 20th century U.S. labor and economic history.
Ryan Sakoda
Ryan Sakoda is an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. He was a lecturer in law and Bigelow teaching fellow at the University of Chicago. Prior to becoming a Bigelow fellow, Sakoda worked at the Boston public defender’s office as a staff attorney, where he represented indigent criminal defendants facing misdemeanor and felony charges from arrest through final disposition. Before his work as a staff attorney, Sakoda was a Liman Public Interest fellow, also at the Boston public defender’s office, where he advised and represented clients on housing cases that arose from arrests, criminal charges, or past criminal convictions.
Sakoda received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He also received an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics as a Fulbright scholar and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley.
Rodney Andrews
Rodney Andrews was a Harvard University Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar; an assistant professor of economics in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas; and director of the Texas Schools Project. He passed away in May 2023. While Dr. Andrews investigated a range of topics including health policy, his recent focus was on the economics of education and, more specifically, the topics of college paths, returns to college quality, and pre-K effects on student achievement. He received his M.A. and Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan, and his B.S. in economics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Robert Manduca
Robert Manduca is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on urban and regional economic development, asking why some places are more prosperous than others and how the economic conditions in which people live shape their life outcomes. Manduca received his Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University and his master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Qingfang Wang
Qingfang Wang is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside. Her research area lies broadly in immigration, labor market, and development. Wang is particularly interested in how place—both work site and residential location—interacts with race, immigration status, and gender in shaping labor market experiences and social-economic well-being. Her work has been funded by the Kauffman Foundation, National Science Foundation, HUD, and other agencies. Her recent work includes research on immigrant, ethnic and female entrepreneurship, and transnational migration of the highly skilled, especially in the higher education sector. Wang has a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, an M.S. from the Central University of Finance and Economics, and a B.S. from the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics.
Rebecca Ryan
Rebecca Ryan is an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University.
Peter Ganong
Peter Ganong is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He studies income volatility and policies to mitigate its consequences. In ongoing work, he is studying the origins of mortgage defaults and the best way to design mortgage modifications to prevent foreclosure. He received a B.A. and a Ph.D., both in economics, from Harvard University. He worked at the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010, helped to start Boston’s Citywide Analytics Team from 2014 to 2015, and helped start immigrantdoctors.org.
Philip Cohen
Philip Cohen is a professor of sociology and a demographer at the University of Maryland, College Park. The focus of his research and teaching concern the sociology of families, social demography, and social inequality. He writes about demographic trends, family structure, the division of labor, health disparities, and open science. He holds a B.A. in American culture from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland.