Alumni/ae Board of Governors - Current Board Members

Elle Beard serves as a special assistant in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs. In this role, she has served the office's communications director, and supports a number of initiatives on behalf of the office administrator. Beard has worked on strategic business development and finance sector coordination for the Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability, which brings together government, community, and industry leaders from the U.S. and Brazil to find innovative ways to generate economic growth, create living wage jobs, eradicate poverty, and protect the environment by focusing on increasing investment in green infrastructure and city-scale green technology strategies.

Maureen Donohue Krauss is vice president of economic development and business attraction at the Detroit Regional Chamber. In this role, she is responsible for strategy, operations, and projects of the Chamber’s business attraction program, a key part of its economic development program portfolio. Krauss joined the Chamber in December 2011 after working in a similar capacity for Oakland County, Michigan for 13 years. In Oakland County, she served as director of the Department of Economic Development and Community Affairs from 2009-11 and as deputy director from 2005-09. In 2003, Krauss served as the president of the Michigan Economic Developers Association.

Dana Hopings is a senior policy analyst for the Education, Workforce and Income Security team at the United States Government Accountability Office, an agency dedicated to improving the performance and accountability of the federal government. There she plans and conducts reviews of multiagency programs and the internal operations of individual agencies. She has also supervised graduate student research projects such as the Ford School Applied Policy Seminar, and others. Prior to this position, Hopings worked as a management consultant, non-profit advocate, and as legislative staff for the U.S. House of Representatives. Her policy areas of expertise include workforce development, disability, and veterans' policy issues.

As a research analyst, Daniela Pineda supports the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Education initiatives, which aim to dramatically increase the number of young Americans who complete a postsecondary degree. Prior to this work, Daniela was a research fellow at MDRC, working with the Young Adults and Postsecondary Education Policy area in New York City. Pineda served as a visiting scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy and has held research fellowships with Mathematica Policy Research and the National Science Foundation. Her policy areas of expertise include institutional reform, data, and policy and accountability in higher education.

Andrew Schroeder is director of research and analysis for Direct Relief International, a non-governmental organization that provides medical supplies and assistance to clinics that treat people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest at home and around the world. In this capacity, he leads efforts to integrate data analysis, spatial technologies, and health informatics with the targeting of humanitarian assistance, the expansion of philanthropic resources, and the design, monitoring, and evaluation of global health programs. He travels frequently to project sites across the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Schroeder holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Analysis from New York University.

As a deputy director with the New York State Division of the Budget, Dan Sheppard plays a leadership role in the development, negotiation, and implementation of the budgets for healthcare and disability services programs; public higher education systems and higher education opportunity programs; and public protection agencies. Recently, he was part of a multi-agency team that redesigned the state’s $53 billion Medicaid program to control costs and improve healthcare outcomes for nearly five million beneficiaries. Sheppard has also served the State Education Department and the State University of New York. His areas of policy expertise include budget and finance, state and local governance, health care, and higher education.

As director of new school development for New Urban Learning, an educational management company in Detroit, Kate Brady-Medley is heavily involved with state and local efforts to bring ‘more good schools’ to Detroit. Since graduating from the Ford School, she helped pioneer a leading Detroit school, serving as principal for four years. While working there, she completed her law degree at Wayne State University and became a member of the State Bar of Michigan. Her policy areas of expertise include education, administrative and environmental law, community organizing, program design and implementation, and grant writing/fundraising.

An associate on the higher education team at Huron Consulting Group in Philadelphia, Pa., Peter Fritz provides management consulting services—including strategic planning, regulatory and policy compliance recommendations, and operational enhancement advising—to colleges, universities, and other research institutions. Prior to this position, Fritz worked with the Henry Ford Learning Institute in Dearborn, Mich., developing performance management tools and staffing models, crafting charter applications for new schools, and creating a school roll-out toolkit for emerging charter schools in Detroit, Chicago, and San Antonio. His policy areas of expertise include consulting, education, finance and financial markets, macroeconomics and money, non-profit management, and urban policy.

Catherine Lomax joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2001, where she currently manages the provision of investment and liquidity management services to foreign central banks. Lomax previously spent five years in the Bank Supervision group of the New York Fed and undertook a year-long rotation through the Chief of Staff’s Office. During her time at the Fed, she has also provided technical assistance to central banks in emerging nations. Her areas of expertise include central bank operations, financial markets, international economic policy, and public management.

As the manager of the Renewable and Clean Energy Strategy Team at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Jomo Thorne actively guides and shapes the company’s strategy to deploy renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its energy supply portfolio. Prior to this position, Thorne worked as a lead transactor in the company’s Energy Procurement Group, negotiating renewable energy contracts. His policy areas of expertise include energy, and community and economic development.

Paul Weech is a federal housing policy expert with more than 25 years of experience in the affordable housing and financial services fields. As the executive vice president for policy and member engagement with the Housing Partnership Network, Weech directs policy development and advocacy for the high-performing nonprofit affordable housing sector in Washington, D.C. Prior to his current role, Weech served in a variety of affordable housing and public policy leadership positions, including vice president for mission strategy and execution at Fannie Mae, chief of staff at the United States Small Business Administration, and staff director for the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Governor Rick Snyder recently appointed Jeff Barnes as deputy chief of staff and public safety group executive. He coordinates the Michigan Department of Corrections, Michigan Department of State Policy and Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. He previously held the position of policy director and campaign manager during Rick Snyder’s Michigan Gubernatorial Campaign. Prior to this position, Barnes served as an officer in the U.S. Army, where he worked with foreign governments to establish security, rebuild infrastructure, and train security forces. He did overseas tours in Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq. Barnes has received two Bronze Stars, a Meritorious Service Medal, a Combat-Action-Badge, and an Honorary Order of St. George. His policy areas of expertise include national security, state and local politics, and budget and finance.

As an assistant director at The Asia Foundation, Bulbul Gupta manages a portfolio of projects at 19 field offices in Asia—designing, implementing, and monitoring programs for economic reform, disaster recovery, environmental management, and more. She also reviews country and sector programming at the foundation’s San Francisco headquarters. Prior to this, Gupta worked with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and spent several years as a Presidential Management Fellow at USAID's Program Policy and Coordination Bureau in Washington D.C. Her areas of expertise include advocacy, budgeting, community and economic development, the environment, foreign policy and diplomacy, government relations and lobbying, international development, international trade and investment, and microfinance.

A statistician for the United Nations in New York, Paul Hanna began his career working in a regional office for the Middle East, stationed in Beirut. There he worked on water and environmental issues. Prior to this position, Hanna served as an economic affairs officer at the United Nations, a senior budget analyst with the New York Office of Management and Budget, and an engineer at the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board. His areas of expertise include budgeting, the environment, statistics, international classification, and international development.

As a Policy Adviser and Education Officer at the United States Agency for International Development, Maggie is the lead for U.S. donor collaboration vis-a-vis the Global Partnership for Education. She provides guidance to field staff on the use of impact evaluation to improve education programming, and contributes to the overall USAID education strategy of improving reading outcomes at primary levels of schooling and improving access to education in conflict and fragile environments. Prior to this, Koziol worked at the World Bank, where she focused on education and health service delivery. She is also a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Ukraine 2003-2005). Her policy areas of expertise include international education, impact evaluation, and issues of governance in the social sectors.

Global director and chief economist at Jefferson Wells International, Victor Miesel’s expertise is in international corporate taxation and finance—commonly called transfer pricing—the primary mechanism by which multi-national corporations manage their effective tax rate. Euromoney magazine has recognized Miesel as one of the leading transfer pricing experts for the past four years. He is a frequent speaker at international corporate taxation seminars in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and manages a global group of economists and international tax lawyers. Miesel’s areas of policy expertise include finance and financial markets, international macroeconomics and finance, international trade and investment, and tax and public finance.

Nicole Shepardson has worked in the U.S. Department of State for eight years using her foreign policy experience in humanitarian, human rights, and migration issues to interact with United Nations agencies, the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, and non-governmental organizations, and to engage in strategic planning to manage federal resources that exceeded $1.7 billion in 2009 alone. She has traveled abroad to monitor U.S. humanitarian programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, the Great Lakes region, and the Caribbean. Her policy areas of expertise include foreign policy/diplomacy, human rights, immigration, international development, and public management.