Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of Speakers, Moderators, and Planning Committee Members¹

Jeanine Abrams McLean, Ph.D., is the vice president of Fair Count, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by Stacey Abrams. The goal of Fair Count is to ensure that every person in Georgia and the nation is seen, heard, and counted for a fair and accurate census and to build pathways to continued civic participation, including voter education and redistricting. Dr. Abrams McLean is a highly skilled researcher with over 15 years of experience designing, managing, and implementing population-based studies and projects. While at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she applied her expertise in computational biology and population research to advance public health initiatives. She has extensive project management experience as well as work in community organizing. In addition to her work in public health, she is passionate about finding creative ways to tackle community-based issues using both strategic planning and innovative ideas.

Jeanne Ayers, R.N., M.P.H., serves as the executive director of Healthy Democracy, Healthy People initiative (previously known as VoteSAFE Public Health), a coalition of 10 national public health organizations focused on advancing health equity by ensuring that participation in the electoral process is available to everyone. Before joining the initiative in 2020, Ms. Ayers held leadership roles in state governmental public health for over 9 years. She was the Wisconsin state health officer and the

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¹ *denotes planning committee member, ^†denotes roundtable member.

administrator of the Division of Public Health and earlier served as assistant commissioner and chief health equity strategist for the Minnesota Department of Health. Prior positions include the director of nursing and preventive services and occupational health at the University of Minnesota Boynton Health Service. She worked in professional continuing education for 15 years and founded and directed the Centers for Public Health Education and Outreach at the School of Public Health, University of Minnesota.

Ms. Ayers has long been a recognized leader in national efforts to assure health and racial equity and improve population health. She was selected as the 2010 University of Minnesota Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award winner for her work on health and racial equity and was responsible for development of the Minnesota Department of Health, award-winning report Advancing Health Equity in Minnesota: A Report to the State Legislature. Ms. Ayers has worked extensively with government, academia, health care, community groups, and broad-based community organizers to deepen the public understanding of the social determinants of health and their relationship to race, place, class, and power. She led the health equity work of the faith-based organizing group ISAIAH and launched and directed the Healthy Heartland Initiative, a partnership of community organizing groups and public health organizations in five Midwest states building collective capacity to impact public policy. Ms. Ayers describes her work as building power to assure the conditions necessary for health are available for all. She sees civic participation and a healthy inclusive democracy as a prerequisite to advancing health equity and creating healthy communities.

Raymond J. Baxter, Ph.D.,^† is the co-chair of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Dr. Baxter has led a distinguished career devoted to improving health and health care in America and the world. His leadership in strategy, policy, operations, and research has touched nearly every facet of the health field: public health, hospitals and ambulatory care, integrated delivery systems, mental health, long-term care, and environmental health.

Dr. Baxter most recently was the chief executive officer of the Blue Shield of California Foundation. Its mission is to make California the healthiest state and to end domestic violence by addressing the root causes of ill health and inequity. For 15 years Dr. Baxter was Kaiser Permanente’s national senior vice president for community benefit, research, and health policy. There he built the largest community benefit program in the United States, investing more than $2 billion annually in community health. He led Kaiser Permanente’s signature national

health improvement partnerships, including the Weight of the Nation, the Convergence Partnership, and the Partnership for a Healthier America. Dr. Baxter established Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Effectiveness and Safety Research and built out its national genomics research bank, served as President of KP International, and chaired Kaiser Permanente’s field-leading environmental stewardship work. He was also a founding sponsor of the KP School of Medicine.

Previously Dr. Baxter headed the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and The Lewin Group. He holds a doctorate from Princeton University. Dr. Baxter currently serves on the advisory boards to the deans of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health and the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing as well as on the boards of the CDC Foundation and the Blue Shield of California Foundation. He served multiple terms on the Global Agenda Council on Health of the World Economic Forum and the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Ph.D., M.D., M.A.S.,^† is a professor in and the chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and also the Lee Goldman, M.D., Endowed Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is the inaugural vice dean for population health and health equity in the UCSF School of Medicine. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo co-founded the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital which generates actionable research to increase health equity and reduce health disparities in at-risk populations in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and nationally. She is one of the principal investigators of the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute and leads the UCSF COVID Community Public Health Initiative.

Dr. Bibbins-Domingo is a general internist, cardiovascular disease epidemiologist, and a national leader in prevention and interventions to address health disparities. She is a National Institutes of Health–funded researcher who uses observational studies, pragmatic trials, and simulation modeling to examine effective clinical, public health, and policy interventions aimed at prevention. She leads the UCSF Cardiovascular Disease Policy Model group that conducts simulation modeling, disease projections, and cost-effectiveness analyses related to cardiovascular disease in the United States and in other national contexts.

Dr. Bibbins-Domingo was a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force from 2010 to 2017 and led the task force as the vice-chair and chair from 2014 to 2017. She is an inducted member of the American

Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine.

Jocelyn Bissonnette, M.P.M., is the special projects director at the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, where she leads the organization’s Funders Census Initiative (FCI) and redistricting program. These efforts are designed to mobilize funders to engage and invest around a fair and accurate census and fair representation in redistricting, with a focus on historically undercounted and under-represented communities.

Bissonnette previously served as the director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS), where she represented public school district leaders before Congress and the administration. At NAFIS, she led the organization’s policy, advocacy, and regulatory work on the $1.4 billion Impact Aid program. She also engaged a diverse set of members and coalition partners in support of federal funding for school infrastructure and against private school voucher legislation. In addition, she served as president of the Committee for Education Funding, a 110-member coalition that advocates for increased federal investments across the education continuum.

Bissonnette holds a B.A. in economics from the University of New Hampshire and a masters in policy management from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, where her capstone focused on the undercount risk of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the 2020 Census. She completed a policy fellowship with the Institute for Educational Leadership and an executive certificate in nonprofit management from Georgetown University.

Erika Blacksher, Ph.D.,* is an ethicist and engagement scientist. She is the John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, an endowed chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics, and a research professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Blacksher studies ethical and policy questions raised by U.S. health inequalities and the role of democratic deliberation in advancing health equity and social justice. Her current work focuses on questions of justice raised by worsening white mortality trends and the potential roles of whiteness and early life deprivation.

Dr. Blacksher is also steeped in deliberative democratic practice with a long history of collaborating with others to develop and implement innovative participatory, often community-rooted research with diverse stakeholders to address ethical questions in health, health care, and research. She has designed and implemented deliberative forums, as a co-investigator on National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded studies; as a consultant to the NIH-funded Center for the Ethics of Indigenous

Genomic Research, working with leadership to adapt democratic deliberation for tribal contexts, customs, and values; and in projects such as Conducting a Virtual Public Deliberation on Prioritizing COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution, a collaboration between the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, a rare deliberative engagement held during the pandemic to elicit citizen input on fairness in vaccine distribution.

Prior to her current roles, Dr. Blacksher was an associate professor (with tenure) and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington (2010 to 2020). From 2006 to 2008 she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University in New York City, after which she joined The Hastings Center as a research scholar, working on questions in public health ethics and policy (2008 to 2010). Dr. Blacksher has masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia’s bioethics program and undergraduate degrees in philosophy and journalism from the University of Kansas.

Adam Carr is the deputy editor for community engagement at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. Mr. Carr’s work ranges from writing to media, photography to film making, public art to in-depth tours. He is a member of the Rural Urban FLOW network and national Performing Our Future coalition. He was co-chair for the Coordinating Committee of March On Milwaukee 50th commemorating Milwaukee’s Open Housing Marches with a 200 Nights of Freedom in 2017–2018. In 2016 he authored the children’s book Explore MKE: Your Neighborhood, Our City, working with five third-grade classrooms throughout Milwaukee and SHARP Literacy. Mr. Carr is the deputy editor for community engagement at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and was the producer at 88Nine RadioMilwaukee from 2008 to 2011.

Aidan Cervantes is a graduating senior at Gonzales High School as well as one of the youth commissioners leading the Gonzales Youth Council. This fall he will be attending the University of California at Los Angeles, where he will be majoring in public affairs. Mr. Cervantes hopes to one day come back to his county and work in city or county government.

Ahtza Dawn Chavez, M.B.A., M.L.S., is the executive director of the NAVA Education Project. As the executive director of both the NAVA Education Project and its sister organization, NM Native Vote, she oversees organizations tasked with educating and creating an indigenous voting bloc in New Mexico, working with key organizations and governance within the state. She is the small business owner of IndigeLens

Media, which focuses on showcasing indigenous voices, enhancing tribal community, promoting social entrepreneurship and increasing visibility of authentic representations of indigenous culture and language. Ms. Chavez has worked on various GOTV campaigns in Indian Country (Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo) and with urban populations and is heavily invested in the fight for tribal broadband access.

Chavez’s vision includes focusing on increasing civic engagement within Native American communities and continuing to collaborate and unify voter blocs while strengthening Indigenous sovereignty and control over our sacred lands. Ms. Chavez completed her undergraduate at Stanford University and transferred to the University of New Mexico (UNM) where she received her bachelor of arts in sociology. She then went on to receive her masters of business administration from the Anderson School of Business in 2019 and then her masters of studies in law from the UNM Law School with a concentration in federal Indian law in 2020. Ms. Chavez is a member of the Diné Nation, born for Kewa Pueblo.

Joshua Clark, Ph.D., M.A., is a political participation analyst and lead researcher for the Civic Engagement Narrative Change project at the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. In this role he carries out qualitative and quantitative research and analysis on public beliefs, opinions, and narratives related to topics of civic participation, identity, inter-group relations, the role of government, and economic inequality. This research is designed and developed collaboratively with civic and movement-based partner organizations, with the aim of strengthening programs to motivate civic participation, advance multiracial bridging, and bring about narrative change. His publications on such topics as voter suppression and civic infrastructure, trends in voter behavior and participation, and public narratives on corporate taxation can be found on the Othering & Belonging Institute website.

Dr. Clark is a sociocultural anthropologist with 15 years of experience in research and advocacy focused on racial justice, immigrant rights, and indigenous rights in the Americas. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, where his dissertation analyzed implementation and assessment practices for carrying out nation-states’ obligations to international norms on combating racial discrimination. Prior to that, Dr. Clark held positions at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law. In these roles, he contributed to numerous collaborations aimed at using social science research and community knowledge for legal, policy, and social change. Dr. Clark has a deeply interdisciplinary outlook and training, having also earned a M.A. in Latin American studies, and a B.A. in political science.

Daniel Dawes, J.D.,* is a lawyer, author, scholar, educator, and leader in the health equity, health reform, and mental health movements. He is the executive director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and a professor of health law, policy, and management. He is also the co-founder of the Health Equity Leadership and Exchange Network, which is a nationwide network of more than 2,000 governmental and nongovernmental leaders and scholars focused on bolstering leadership and the exchange of research, information, and solutions to advance evidence-based health-equity-focused policies and programs. Dawes’s research focuses on the drivers of health inequities among under-resourced, vulnerable, and marginalized communities, and he is the pioneer of a new approach to examining inequities, the political determinants of health. He brings a forward-thinking, inclusive, and multidisciplinary approach to health policy and has authored two groundbreaking books, 150 Years of ObamaCare and The Political Determinants of Health, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which have received critical acclaim and rave reviews.

Mr. Dawes was instrumental in shaping the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) and founded and chaired the largest advocacy group, the National Working Group on Health Disparities and Health Reform, focused on developing comprehensive, inclusive, and meaningful legislation to reform the health care system and address the disparities in health care and health status among racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, women, children, LGBT individuals, and other vulnerable groups in the United States.

Mr. Dawes is an elected fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and serves or served on several boards, commissions, and councils focused on improving health outcomes and elevating health equity in the United States and around the world. He is the recipient of several national awards and recognition, including the American Public Health Association’s Award for Significant Contribution to Public Health, the American Psychological Association’s Exceptional Leadership in Advocacy Award, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health Equity Champion Award, the National Medical Association’s Louis Stokes Health Advocacy Award, Families USA Health Equity Advocate Award, and the NMQF Health Leader Award.

Archon Fung, Ph.D., is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads the democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School.

His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy. Dr. Fung has authored five books, four edited collections, and over 50 articles appearing in professional journals. He received a B.S. in philosophy and physics and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Gastil, Ph.D., M.A., is a distinguished professor in communication arts and sciences and political science and a senior scholar at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Gastil studies political deliberation and group decision making across a range of contexts. His newest books are Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back into Politics with Katie Knobloch and Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance with Erik Olin Wright. Dr. Gastil also has two novels: a near-future political sci-fi tale, Gray Matters, and a literary tribute to gaming culture, Dungeon Party.

Dr. Gastil’s work on the Citizen’s Initiative Review has helped evaluate an exciting new form of public deliberation that should improve initiative elections. His Jury and Democracy Project has investigated and hopefully helped vindicate the jury system as a valuable civic educational institution. His work with the Cultural Cognition Project demonstrates the ways in which people’s deeper values bias how they learn about issues and form opinions. Dr. Gastil has integrated some of the best research in his primary fields of study in two books. Political Communication and Deliberation uses the idea of public deliberation as a way to organize the wide study of political communication, and The Group in Society presents an embedded system framework for integrating research on group communication and behavior. Dr. Gastil received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

David B. Grusky, Ph.D., is the Barbara Kimball Browning Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of sociology, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and a co-editor of Pathways Magazine. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a co-recipient of the 2004 Max Weber Award, a founder of the Cornell University Center for the Study of Inequality, and a former presidential young investigator.

Dr. Grusky’s research examines changes in the amount, types, and sources of inequality. His recent books are Inequality in the 21st Century (with Jasmine Hill, 2017), Social Stratification (with Kate Weisshaar, 2014),

Occupy the Future (with Douglas McAdam, Robert Reich, and Debra Satz, 2012), The New Gilded Age (with Tamar Kricheli-Katz, 2011), and The Great Recession (with Bruce Western and Chris Wimer, 2011).

Dawn Hunter, J.D., M.P.H., is the deputy director of the Network for Public Health Law’s southeastern region office. Prior to joining the network, she served in a variety of roles focused on public health, policy, and health equity. Ms. Hunter has worked in state public health at the New Mexico Department of Health, where she started as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation visiting attorney in public health law through the network. She also served as the director of health equity, policy director, and deputy cabinet secretary. During her tenure, she led a variety of initiatives to address health system innovation, and some of her core responsibilities included managing the department’s legislative and policy activities as well as strategic planning, performance management, and public health accreditation.

Ms. Hunter started her career in child protective services in Hillsborough County, Florida. She later transitioned into research and development as a microbiologist at the University of South Florida, Center for Biological Defense, with a focus on rapid detection methods for food and waterborne pathogens. Ms. Hunter is certified in public health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners. She received her B.A. in English literature from Princeton University, her B.S. in microbiology, her M.P.H. in global communicable disease from the University of South Florida, and her J.D. from Stetson University College of Law.

Sheri Johnson, Ph.D., M.A.,*^† is the director of the Population Health Institute and an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has dedicated her career of more than 25 years to partnering with children, families, community organizations, and systems to advance health and well-being. Awed by the resilience of individuals and communities, she is motivated to remove unfair obstacles and conditions that create and perpetuate health inequities. Dr. Johnson completed undergraduate studies at Brown University, earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Boston University, and served as a clinical fellow in psychology at Harvard Medical School. She was previously the director of behavioral health at Milwaukee Health Services, Inc., a federally qualified health center, and served as the administrator and state health officer for the Wisconsin Division of Public Health. Immediately prior to joining the Institute, she was an associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin Center for Advancement of Underserved Children, where she collaborated with diverse stakeholders to address a broad range of real-world problems.

Meira Levinson, D.Phil., is a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her areas of research include civic education, racial justice, and educational ethics. She is currently working to start a global field of educational ethics, modeled after bioethics, that is philosophically rigorous, disciplinarily and experientially inclusive, and both relevant to and informed by educational policy and practice. Like many people, Dr. Levinson has focused much of her work on COVID over the past year. She serves on the Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s Committee on Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel; has authored white papers, policy guidance, and articles on the ethics of school reopenings; and is currently conducting a research and professional development initiative with educators in 10 countries on the ethical issues they face under COVID. Dr. Levinson has written or co-edited six books, including Democratic Discord in Schools, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics, and No Citizen Left Behind. She shares educational ethics resources on JusticeinSchools.org, rich video materials to support higher education pedagogy at Instructional Moves, and resources for youth activists and teacher allies at YouthinFront.org. Each of these projects reflects Dr. Levinson’s commitment to achieving productive cross-fertilization—without loss of rigor—among scholarship, policy, and practice. She earned a B.A. in philosophy at Yale and a D.Phil. in political theory at Nuffield College, Oxford University. She also taught middle school for 8 years in the Atlanta and Boston public schools.

Bruce Link, Ph.D., M.S.,* is a distinguished professor of sociology and public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and a professor emeritus of epidemiology and sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Link’s interests are centered on topics in psychiatric and social epidemiology as they bear on policy issues. He has written on the connection between socioeconomic status and health, homelessness, violence, stigma, and discrimination. With Jo Phelan, he has advanced the theory of social conditions as fundamental causes of disease. He currently conducts research on the life course origins of health inequalities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, consequences of social stigma for life chances among people who are subject to stigma, and evaluating intervention efforts aimed at reducing mental illness stigma in children attending middle school.

His awards include the Leonard Pearlin Award for career achievement from the Mental Health Section of the American Sociological Association, the Leo G. Reeder Award from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, and the Rema Lapouse Award from the Mental Health Section of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Link was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2002. He earned his B.A. from Earlham College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.

Phyllis Meadows, Ph.D., M.S.N., R.N.,*^† is a senior fellow in the Health Program at The Kresge Foundation. As a senior fellow, Dr. Meadows engages in all levels of grantmaking activity. Since joining The Kresge Foundation in 2009, she has advised its health team on the development of its overall strategic direction and provided leadership in the design and implementation of grantmaking initiatives and projects. She has led the foundation’s Emerging Leaders and Public Health Program and advises and supports the development of cross-team programming efforts with the Detroit, environment, and human services programs.

Dr. Meadows’ 30-year career spans the nursing, public health, academic, and philanthropic sectors. She is the former associate dean for practice and clinical professor in health management and policy at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, where she designed and implemented community-based health strategies, evaluation, research, and courses on leadership, policy, population health, and health equity. Her work in public health includes serving as deputy director and then director/public health officer for the city of Detroit. In addition to serving as adjunct faculty with the schools of nursing at Wayne State University and Oakland University, Dr. Meadows’ professional experience includes leadership roles across the health sector, working to deliver programs and services with an array of multi-disciplinary professionals in health, education, and human services. She was selected for the Kellogg International Leadership Program—Group I. After completing the three-year fellowship, she joined the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as a program director, working to advance high-quality programs for children and youth in education and higher education and in communities nationally and internationally. Dr. Meadows maintains an active advisory role on several national, statewide initiatives and boards that focus on improving the health of marginalized and low-income communities.

Isabel Mendoza served as a youth commissioner in the 2019–2020 school year and as a Gonzales Youth Council member from 2015 to 2018. Mendoza is a sophomore at Santa Clara University and an intern for the City of Gonzales, California Community Engagement & Strategic Partnerships. She is currently studying psychology with hopes of becoming a clinical psychologist for children and adolescents or of pursuing a career in the community, similar to what she is doing as an intern for Gonzales. Mendoza has assisted with the Youth Commissioner Summer Fellowship, taken notes during community meetings, helped manage the social media page, and helped prepare presentations. One of the most notable of her experiences in the Gonzales Youth Council came when the council conducted a mental health project in collaboration with California State University, Monterey Bay, because it solidified her decision to pursue a career in psychology.

Philip Napoli, Ph.D., M.S., is the James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and a faculty affiliate with the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He also serves as a docent at the University of Helsinki. Dr. Napoli’s research focuses on media institutions and media regulation and policy. He has provided formal and informal expert testimony on these topics to government bodies such as the U.S. Senate, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Congressional Research Service. Dr. Napoli is the author of four books: Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media, Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences, and Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age. He is also the editor of Media Diversity and Localism: Meaning and Metrics and co-editor with Minna Aslama of Communications Research in Action: Scholar–Activist Collaborations for a Democratic Public Sphere. Dr. Napoli has also published more than 50 articles in legal, public policy, journalism, and communication journals as well as more than 30 invited book chapters in edited collections.

Dr. Napoli’s research has received awards and has been cited in a number of government proceedings and reports. His current project, funded by the Democracy Fund, is the News Measures Research Project, which focuses on developing new approaches to assessing the health of local journalism ecosystems in an effort to identify the community characteristics that affect the health of local journalism. Dr. Napoli is a firm believer in engaged scholarship and has engaged in research consultations and collaborations with a wide range of organizations, including the Federal Communications Commission, the New America Foundation, Free Press, the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, the Center for Creative Voices in Media, Internews, the American Television Alliance, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. He has been interviewed in media outlets such as the NBC Nightly News, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Politico, and National Public Radio. Dr. Napoli received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. from Boston University, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.,* is a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside, and the founding director of its Center for Social Innovation. He has published many articles and seven books, including, most recently, Citizenship Reimagined and Framing Immigrants. He has written dozens of op-eds and has appeared in nearly 3,000 news stories. Dr. Ramakrishnan is currently working on

projects related to racial equity in philanthropy and regional development. He holds a B.A. in international relations from Brown University and a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton.

Dr. Ramakrishnan serves on the boards of The California Endowment and the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, chairs the California Commission on APIA Affairs, and serves on the U.S. Census Bureau’s national advisory committee. He is founding director of AAPIData.com, which publishes demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. He also founded Census Legacies, which builds on the foundation of census outreach coalitions to build more inclusive and equitable communities.

Rinku Sen, M.S., is the executive director of Narrative Initiative and a writer and social justice strategist. She was formerly the executive director of Race Forward and was the publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. Under Ms. Sen’s leadership, Race Forward generated some of the most impactful racial justice successes of recent years, including Drop the I-Word, a campaign for media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as “illegal,” which resulted in the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, and many more outlets changing their practice. She was also the architect of the Shattered Families report, which identified the number of kids in foster care whose parents had been deported.

Her books Stir it Up and The Accidental American theorize a model of community organizing that integrates a political analysis of race, gender, class, poverty, sexuality, and other systems. As a consultant, Ms. Sen has worked on narrative and political strategy with numerous organizations and foundations, including PolicyLink, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She serves on numerous boards, including of the Women’s March, where she is co-president, and the Foundation for National Progress, publisher of Mother Jones magazine. Ms. Sen received her B.A. in women’s studies from Brown University. She earned her M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.

Courtney Stewart, M.A., is the vice president of strategic communications at the Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH). At MFH she is responsible for leading foundation-wide communications and providing direction and support for use of communications tools in program implementation. Before joining the Foundation, she served as the associate vice president of university relations at Harris-Stowe State University. She has also held the position of communications specialist for the Boeing Defense, Space, and Security division at the Boeing Company, where she supported internal and chief executive officer communications as well as supplier management. Ms. Stewart has a B.J. degree from University of

Missouri-Columbia and an M.A. in communications management from Webster University.

Itzhak Yanovitzky, Ph.D., M.A.,* is a professor of communication at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. He also has a secondary appointment at the Rutgers School of Public Health Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy and is a core faculty member of the Rutgers Global Health Institute; a research fellow at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research; and a faculty mentor in the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program. Dr. Yanovitzky is an expert in the areas of behavior change communication, social marketing, public health policy making, and program evaluation. He has extensive experience with community capacity building across a broad range of health and wellness issues, such as substance abuse, mental health, cancer prevention, and food safety. He has conducted work with immigrant populations in New Jersey and in sub-Saharan African countries to build capacity for health communication training.

Dr. Yanovitzky’s program of applied research explores communication processes and mechanisms that can support evidence-informed decision making at the individual and community levels. A major thrust of this work involves designing and testing behavioral and structural (or environmental) interventions that bridge the gap between research-based knowledge and the adoption of sound policies and practices. Dr. Yanovitzky’s recent work also explores the utility of knowledge brokering (e.g., using research intermediaries such as journalists and health advocacy groups) as a mechanism for connecting federal and state policy makers with relevant research evidence when formulating, implementing, and evaluating policies. Dr. Yanovitzky currently serves as a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication Research and Practice. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Haifa in Israel and a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.