Brandon Enriquez is a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an incoming assistant professor at the University of Maryland Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He is a labor economist who primarily focuses on the causes and consequences of racial inequality. During the 2021–2022 school year, he was on leave at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Enriquez graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with his Ph.D. in 2024.
Expert Type: Grantee
Camilla Schneier
Camilla Schneier is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Chicago. Her research explores competition and consumer outcomes in the food industry. Broadly, she is interested in industrial organization and macroeconomics. Between 2017 and 2019, she was a research assistant in macroeconomics at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Before that, she studied economics and physics, and minored in mathematics, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Yixin Sun
Yixin Sun is a Ph.D candidate in economics at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. She is an applied microeconomist with research interests in development, environment, and food policy. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago. She also holds a B.A. in economic statistics from Columbia University.
Donn. L. Feir
Donn. L. Feir is an applied labor economist and economic historian who has published on reconciliation, modern Indigenous labor market experiences, health, and the impact of historic policies on Indigenous economies and people. Feir is an Associate Professor at the University of Victoria, and a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Feir received their Ph.D. from the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia.
Samuel L. Myers Jr.
Samuel L. Myers, Jr. is the director of and professor in the Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He has published extensively on applied microeconomic and policy issues in leading economics and interdisciplinary journals and books. Myers is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration; a past president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management; the former chair of the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering; and a former president of the National Economic Association. He holds concurrent appointments in the applied economics Ph.D. program and the graduate minor in population studies at the University of Minnesota. Myers received his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mario Small
Mario L. Small is Quetelet professor of social science at Columbia University. An elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Small is an expert on social inequality, neighborhoods, social networks, and the relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods. His books include Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life, Someone To Talk To: How Networks Matter in Practice, and (with Jessica Calarco) Qualitative Literacy: A Guide for Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research. He has testified on social capital and inequality before the U.S. Senate. Small received his B.A. in sociology/anthropology from Carleton College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.
Tridevi Chakma
Tridevi Chakma is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Environmental Economics program. She is also an affiliate of the Environmental Inequality Lab. Her research interests lie in the intersection of environmental economics and public finance, with a focus on the causes and consequences of environmental inequality. Her current projects document racial disparities in heat exposure and examine the drivers of heat disparities in the United States. Prior to the Ph.D. program, Chakma worked at Oxera Consulting. She completed an M.Sc. in finance and economics at the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in finance at the Australian National University.
John Kallas
Johnnie Kallas is a Ph.D. candidate in labor relations at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His research explores the changing nature of labor organizing in the United States, with a particular focus on the conditions under which strikes are most effective for workers and their organizations. The main chapter of his dissertation examines strikes and strike outcomes by healthcare workers. He also serves as project director of the ILR Labor Action Tracker, an online database that seeks to overcome limitations in official sources by comprehensively documenting strike activity across the United States. Kallas received his B.A. in politics and history from Oberlin College.
Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith is an associate professor of economics at Georgia State University and a faculty fellow with the Georgia Policy Labs. His research focuses on the behavioral and institutional factors that influence college choice and completion, along with the labor market implications. Prior to Georgia State University, he worked as a policy research scientist at the College Board. Smith received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston University and a B.A. in economics from Tufts University.
Justin Ortagus
Justin C. Ortagus is an associate professor of higher education administration and policy and the director of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Florida. His research typically examines the impact of online education, community colleges, and state policies on the opportunities and outcomes of underserved students. Ortagus has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor on the role and influence of need-based financial aid for low-income students. He received his Ph.D. in higher education from Pennsylvania State University.