Kathryn Edin

BLOOMBERG DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, Johns Hopkins University

am the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology, Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health. I received my Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in 1991 and I have also taught at Rutgers University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, Harvard University as a Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School and chair of their Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. I am a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and on the Department of Health and Human Services advisory committee for the poverty research centers at Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford. I am a founding member of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on Housing and Families with Young Children and a past member of the MacArthur Network on the Family and the Economy. In 2014 I became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

H. Luke Shaefer

Associate Professor of Social Work and Associate Professor of Public Policy

Luke Shaefer's research focuses on the effectiveness of the United States’ social safety net in serving low-wage workers and economically disadvantaged families.

His recent work explores rising levels of extreme poverty in the United States, the impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on material hardships, barriers to unemployment insurance faced by vulnerable workers, and strategies for increasing access to oral health care in the United States.

Shaefer is further interested in non-profit management, particularly the economics of social service administration. He has significant non-profit program management experience and has served as board president for a public foundation and an education nonprofit.