Sondra Beverly is an independent scholar with more than 10 years of experience researching asset building in low-income families. She has helped design and implement a large quasi-experimental study of children’s savings accounts and smaller studies of programs that offer low-cost savings accounts and refund splitting during tax season. She received her M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in economics from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Adam Carasso is chief economist for the House Budget Committee (Democratic staff). Previously, he was a research director at the New America Foundation and a research associate for the Urban Institute. He has written extensively on how federal programs affect the distribution of wealth, income, and taxation. Carasso’s research has been featured on NPR and in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times. He received his master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland.
Henry Chen served as an Urban Institute research associate from 2003 to 2007. While at the Urban Institute, he was a member of the Opportunity and Ownership Projectteam. Using large survey databases such as the Survey of Consumer Finances and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, he has studied the personal finance, employment, and education patterns of the poor. He received his B.A. in economics and mathematics from Northwestern University.
Reid Cramer is research director of the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation. Recently, he served as a codirector of the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract initiative. Prior to joining New America, he served as a policy and budget analyst in Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations. Cramer earned his Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the Pratt Institute.
Jin Huang is a doctoral student at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and a research associate in the Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis. His areas of interest are poverty, asset building, and disability. He has published several articles on disability, asset building, and Chinese social policy. He received his master of social work from Washington University in St. Louis.
Robert I. Lerman, senior fellow at Urban Institute and professor of economics at American University, has published widely and conducted policy analyses on income support, youth development, family structure, and asset building. He formerly served as staff economist for the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and the U.S. Department of Labor. His current research deals with family structure, apprenticeship training, and asset-based policies. Lerman earned his A.B. at Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in economics at MIT.
Yunju Nam is an assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and a faculty affiliate of its Center for Social Development, both at Washington University in Saint Louis. Her scholarly interests include asset building as a socioeconomic development tool. She has examined the impact of asset tests in welfare programs on low-income households and the roles of assets in children’s long-term development. She holds a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Michigan.
Mark R. Rank is the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include poverty, social welfare, economic inequality, and social policy. His most recent book is One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (2005) and is published by Oxford University Press.
Caroline Ratcliffe is an economist and senior research associate at the Urban Institute, where she has worked since 1996. She was recently a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University and is currently an adjunct professor there. Her research focuses on the outcomes and behaviors of low-income families, including their asset accumulation. Her research has been published in reports, policy briefs, and peer-reviewed journals. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.
Mark Schreiner is senior scholar with the Center for Social Development at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in Saint Louis. Along with Michael Sherraden, he wrote Can the Poor Save? Saving and Asset Building in Individual Development Accounts (Transaction, 2006), an analysis of the largest demonstration of individual development accounts. He is also director of Microfinance Risk Management L.L.C., a firm that uses poverty scoring and credit scoring to help the poor build assets through improved access to financial services.
Trina R. Williams Shanks is currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. She is coprincipal investigator on the SEED impact assessment survey, a quasi-experimental study of children’s savings accounts among Head Start families. Her interests include asset-building policy and practice across the life cycle; the impact of poverty and wealth on child development outcomes; and community and economic development, especially in urban areas.
Min Zhan is an associate professor with the School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since she joined the faculty in 2001, her research has centered on examining the impact of educational approaches and asset development in the long-term economic well-being of low-income families with children. Her research has been published in more than 20 journal articles, and in book chapters and reports. She received her Ph.D. in social work from Washington University in St. Louis.
