THE ASPEN INSTITUTE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Housing Advisory Group Member
- Vice President of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute
Alanna McCargo focuses on center management, development, and strategy, including the cultivation of innovative partnerships within Urban and with external stakeholders.
Alanna McCargo is vice president of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she focuses on center management, development, and strategy, including the cultivation of innovative partnerships within Urban and with external stakeholders.
McCargo has over 20 years of experience in housing finance, policy, and financial services. She has worked in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors on programs, policies, and research to improve access to housing and mortgage finance. Before joining Urban, McCargo was head of CoreLogic Government Solutions, working with federal and state government agencies, regulators, government-sponsored enterprises, think tanks, and universities to deliver custom data, analytics, and technology solutions to support housing and consumer policy research. Previously, McCargo held leadership roles with Chase and Fannie Mae, managing portfolios, policy efforts, and mortgage servicing transformation and alignment. From 2008 to 2011, she was an agent of the US Treasury Department on housing programs, such as Making Home Affordable and Hardest Hit Funds, working with industry stakeholders on the recovery.
McCargo serves on nonprofit boards and committees, focusing on her passion for helping underserved populations with financial literacy, economic stability, and housing security. She works with Doorways for Women and Families, Women in Housing and Finance, and DC Habitat for Humanity.
McCargo has a BA in communications from the University of Houston, an MBA from the University of Maryland, and an executive certificate in nonprofit management from Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy.
Anmol is a social scientist specializing in economic, racial, and urban inequality. He conducts research and policy development on the financial conditions of low-income communities. Anmol earned a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University and holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Housing Advisory Group Member
- Senior Fellow at the Housing for Consumer Federation
Barry is responsible for CFA's policies on housing and mortgage finance including secondary market systems, foreclosure and loan modification policies, and community reinvestment issues.
Barry Zigas currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Housing for Consumer Federation after serving as the Director of Housing since 2008. He is responsible for CFA's policies on housing and mortgage finance including secondary market systems, foreclosure and loan modification policies, and community reinvestment issues. He also consults with housing and community development nonprofits and foundations on strategy, innovation and leadership through his firm Zigas and Associates LLC.
Zigas was Senior Vice President at Fannie Mae from 1995-2006, where he led the company's single family community lending initiatives, as well as corporate and regulatory reporting on the company's housing goals, investments in CDFIs, and support for homeownership counseling and education. He joined Fannie Mae in 1993 as Vice President for Housing Impact.
Zigas served as President of the National Low Income Housing Coalition from 1984-1993, where he led the efforts to create the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the HOME program and expanded responsibilities for community lending at Fannie and Freddie, and as Associate Executive Director and other staff positions at the US Conference of Mayors from 1976-1984. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Grinnell College with an honors degree in history, from which he also received an Alumni Award in 2012, and he is a 1997 graduate of the Wharton School's Advanced Management Program.
Zigas has previously served as Chairman of the Board of Mercy Housing, Inc, and Vice Chair of the Low Income Investment Fund, and currently serves as a Director the National Housing Conference. He was appointed to the Bipartisan Policy Center's Housing Commission in December 2011, and previously served on the Rouse-Maxwell Task Force and the Mitchell-Danforth Task Force in the 1980's. Mercy Housing, Inc honored him in 2017 with its Guardian Angel award for lifetime service and achievement. Zigas was inducted into the Affordable Housing Hall of Fame in November 2017.
He is an active participant the foreclosure working group of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR). His articles and commentary have appeared in American Prospect, American Banker, Housing Wire, Washingtonian, Washington Post and other publications, and he is frequently quoted in print and electronic media.
Caroline Ratcliffe is a senior fellow and codirector of the Opportunity and Ownership initiative at the Urban Institute. An expert on asset building and poverty, she has published and spoken extensively on poverty, emergency savings, alternative financial-sector products, and welfare programs and policies. Ratcliffe has evaluated programs aimed at moving low-income families into the financial mainstream and studied how welfare programs and policies affect families' economic well-being. Her research also examines persistent childhood poverty and how it relates to adult success.
Chuck Howard is a current PhD candidate in the Marketing and Behavioural Sciences Division of the Saunder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. Chuck has a Bachelor's degree in International Economics and Finance from Ryerson University. He joined the PhD program in 2014 and his research interests include the causes and consequences of prosocial and antisocial consumer behavior, tax policy, and issues pertaining to methodology and ethics.
Job Titles:
- Director of Research
- Housing Advisory Group Member
- Is Director of Research Analytics and Modeling in the Single - Family Affordable Lending and Access to Credit Division
Cindy Waldron is director of research analytics and modeling in the Single-Family Affordable Lending and Access to Credit division. Her responsibilities include researching the evolving needs of the affordable and underserved markets, providing leadership and coordination for regulatory goals and reporting, generating analytics to expand distribution and access to credit, working with sourcing to target and purchase underserved and goal-rich loans, and providing support to new affordable offerings, programs and services.
A veteran of over 20 years in the mortgage industry, Ms. Waldron joined Freddie Mac in 1999 and has held leadership roles within the Single-Family Model and Analytics and Single-Family Affordable Lending and Access to Credit areas.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor to the Financial Services Practice of Oliver Wyman
Corey currently serves as Senior Advisor to the Financial Services Practice of Oliver Wyman, a global consulting firm. Most recently he was part of the stand-up executive team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as Assistant Director for Deposits, Liquidity Lending, and Reporting Markets. His office recruited experts from various industries under the Bureau's purview and led research, industry outreach, and policy development efforts related to credit reporting, debt collections, remittances, payday lending, and checking accounts. He has testified before US Senate committees on consumer protection issues related to consumer reporting and debt collection.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Merchant Development for Pay
Dana Warren is Senior Director of Merchant Development for PayPal Credit at PayPal where she leads the distribution, marketing, and sales of consumer financing solutions for retailers in North America. Prior to joining PayPal in 2016, Dana spent eight years at American Express working in marketing and strategy.
Darrick Hamilton is the director of the doctoral program in public and urban policy, and jointly appointed as an associate professor of economics and urban policy at The Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy and the Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research at The New School in New York.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director, Research
Elisabeth Jacobs is Senior Director, Research, and Senior Fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her research focuses on economic inequality and mobility, family economic security, poverty, employment, social policy, social insurance, and the politics of inequality.
Job Titles:
- Director of Consumer Research for the JPM
Fiona Greig is the Director of Consumer Research for the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Previously, Fiona served as the Deputy Budget Director for the City of Philadelphia from 2012 through 2014 and as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, Fiona was a consultant at McKinsey & Company for five years, consulting public and social sector clients on strategy, operations and economic development.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Center for Financial Security
J. Michael Collins is faculty director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the Fetzer Family Chair in Consumer & Personal Finance in the School of Human Ecology, an Associate Professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, a family economics specialist for UW-Extension, Cooperative Extension, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty and Center for Demography and Ecology.
Job Titles:
- Director of Housing
- Housing Advisory Group Member
Jeffrey Lubell oversees and provides senior-level guidance on a range of projects related to affordable housing, financial capability, asset-building, and community development.
Jeffrey Lubell is the Director of Housing and Community Initiatives at Abt Associates where he oversees and provides senior-level guidance on a range of projects related to affordable housing, financial capability, asset-building, and community development. From 2006 through August 2013, Mr. Lubell was the Executive Director of the Center for Housing Policy, a nonprofit research organization affiliated with the National Housing Conference. He has also served as Director of the Policy Development Division in HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research, as a housing policy associate at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and as an independent consultant.
Abt Associates is a mission driven research and consulting firm with expertise in a wide range of social programs, working both in the U.S. and overseas. Mr. Lubell specializes in policy analysis, research and technical assistance focused on innovative strategies for preserving and expanding the availability of affordable homes, helping low-income households to build assets and financial capability, and ensuring that families of all incomes can afford to live in growing neighborhoods near transit and job centers. His policy, research and TA interests also include a strong focus on the connections between affordable housing and other social policies, including transportation, health, education, self-sufficiency and economic mobility, financial capability, economic development, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability. One current project is the National Community of Practice on Local Housing Policy, which has produced LocalHousingSolutions.org - a guide to local housing policy for practitioners and policymakers. Mr. Lubell is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College and a past recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- David M. Rubenstein Fellow
- Housing Advisory Group Member
Jenny Schuetz is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. She is an expert in urban economics and housing policy, focusing particularly on housing affordability. Jenny has written extensively on land use regulation, housing prices, urban amenities, and neighborhood change. She has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Economist, and Slate.
Before joining Brookings, Jenny served as a Principal Economist in the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She was also an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and a post-doctoral fellow at New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Jenny is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at GWU's Center for Washington Area Studies and teaches in Georgetown's urban planning program.
Jenny earned a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, a Master's in City Planning from M.I.T., and a B.A. with Highest Distinction in Economics and Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President of National Programs for Local Initiative Support Corporation
Kevin Jordan is the senior vice president of national programs for Local Initiative Support Corporation, where he directs their family income and wealth building work. In his role, he helps LISC implement their comprehensive community redevelopment strategy,
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of Americans for Financial
Lisa Donner is the Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), a coalition that brings together more than 200 national, state, and local groups to work together to reform the financial industry..
Job Titles:
- Vice President for Policy Programs
Maureen Conway serves as Vice President for Policy Programs at the Aspen Institute and as Executive Director of the Institute's Economic Opportunities Program (EOP). Ms. Conway founded EOP's Workforce Strategies Initiative (AspenWSI) and has headed up workforce research at the Aspen Institute since 1999.
Megan Kiesel is the co-owner of Livelihood, a Philadelphia-based firm dedicated to helping consumers achieve financial peace of mind. Prior to starting Livelihood, Ms. Kiesel served nonprofits as an expert in consumer financial decision-making and behavior.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO of True
Ohad Samet is the co-founder and CEO of TrueAccord, a data driven debt recovery platform seeking to put a human face on debt collections by using machine learning and behavioral analytics. He was recently appointed to the CFPB's Consumer Advisory Board.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Insights and Analytics, for the Center
Rachel Schneider is the Senior Vice President, Insights and Analytics, for the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI). In this position, Schneider serves as an industry expert on the underbanked marketplace, identifying new innovations, analyzing trends and managing ongoing consumer research. She coordinates relationships with academic and industry research partners and collaborates with financial services companies and others regarding strategy development and product design related to the underbanked market.
Job Titles:
- Senior Adviser and Director of the Center for Household Financial Stability
Ray Boshara is senior adviser and director of the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The center conducts research on family balance sheets and how they matter for strengthening families and the economy. Boshara is also a senior fellow in the Financial Security Program at the Aspen Institute, where his work focuses on the future of building wealth. Before joining the Fed in 2011, Boshara was vice president of New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C., where he launched and directed several domestic and international policy programs. He has also worked at CFED, a UN agency in Rome, the U.S. Congress, and Ernst & Young. Over the past 25 years, he has advised presidential candidates as well as the George W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Co - Founder of Lend
Sasha Orloff is the CEO and Co-founder of LendUp. LendUp builds technology to provide credit to those that banks and credit union decline. Their first product is a socially responsible alternative to payday loans called The LendUp Ladder. Orloff focused on expanding financial services to new segments or markets, and finding ways to harness new technology to improve lives.
Signe-Mary McKernan is a senior fellow and codirector of the Opportunity and Ownership initiative at the Urban Institute. She is a wealth-building and poverty expert with two decades of experience researching access to assets and credit and the impact of safety net programs. She coedited Asset Building and Low-Income Families, coauthored a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty, and advised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in setting up its research unit.
Job Titles:
- Director of Community Engagement at Clarifi
Soneyet Muhammad serves as Director of Community Engagement at Clarifi, where she leads agency programs and strategic partnerships to address consumers' holistic financial lives. In her role, she uses behaviorally-informed service delivery practices and adapts operations to reach consumers through new partnership channels.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU
Tim Ogden is the managing director of the Financial Access Initiative, a research center based at NYU-Wagner that focuses on how financial services can better meet the needs and improve the lives of poor households around the world, and of the US Financial Diaries project. Tim is also a co-founder of Sona Partners, a thought leadership communications firm, where he has helped develop more than 20 books on topics including leadership, strategy, marketing, and financial inclusion
Tim Ogden (@philaction or @timothyogden) is managing director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU and executive partner at Sona Partners, a thought leadership communications firm. He is co-author of Toyota Under Fire, and author of the forthcoming Experimental Conversations, a collection of interviews with economists conducting field experiments on poverty alleviation. He has developed and edited more than 20 books, including award-winning business books on innovation and marketing. In addition to blogging regularly for SSIR, he serves as editor-in-chief of Philanthropy Action and as a contributing editor for Alliance magazine.
Job Titles:
- Center for Responsible Lending 's Director of Research
Tom Feltner is Center for Responsible Lending's director of research, based in the Durham, North Carolina office. Feltner leads the organization's applied research program and connects research findings with CRL's state and federal policy agenda. He is currently conducting research on payday lending, student lending, and debt buyer practices. Before joining CRL in January 2017, Feltner was director of financial services at Consumer Federation of America, a Washington, DC based research and policy organization. At CFA, Feltner conducted research on payday lending, military financial protections and auto insurance pricing practices in low-wealth communities and communities of color. Previously, Feltner was Vice President of Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based financial services reform organization where he led consumer credit research, advocacy and program evaluation.
William R. Emmons is the lead economist with the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he also serves as assistant vice president. His areas of focus at the Center include household balance sheets and their relationship to the broader economy. He also speaks and writes frequently on banking, financial markets, financial regulation, housing, the economy and other topics.