Agenda and speaker bios

Pamela Herd is the Carol Kakalec Kohn Professor of Social Policy and faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center. Her research focuses on inequality and how it intersects with health, aging, and policy. She is also an expert in survey research and biodemographic methods. She is currently one of the Co-Principal Investigators for General Social Survey, an Investigator with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey, and Chair of the NIH Data Advisory Board for the National Study of Adolescent Health. Professor Herd also researches administrative burden, or the bureaucratic obstacles that people encounter when trying to access government benefits, services, and rights. She is especially interested in how this burden is both shaped by and further reinforces inequality.

Ali Abazeed is the Chief Public Health Officer and Director of the Detroit Health Department, appointed by Mayor Mary Sheffield. He leads a department of more than 280 public health professionals and oversees a nearly $60 million budget, advancing a Health in All Policies approach that embeds health across city government and centers the needs of Detroit residents.

Born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn along the Tireman border, Abazeed’s work is shaped by a lived understanding that place matters. He believes health outcomes are not inevitable. They are shaped by policy, investment, environment, and whether public institutions are willing to act.

Before returning to Detroit, Abazeed served as the founding Director and Chief Public Health Officer of the Dearborn Department of Public Health, where he built one of Michigan’s newest municipal health departments from the ground up. He previously served across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a Presidential Management Fellow and Public Health Advisor at the National Institutes of Health.

He is also a faculty member at Wayne State University, where he teaches Health in All Policies and mentors emerging public health leaders. Abazeed holds graduate degrees in public health and public policy from the University of Michigan and completed executive education at Harvard Kennedy School.

Elly Jordan is the Public Benefits Attorney at Michigan Poverty Law Program, where she works statewide to improve access to public benefits through impact litigation, policy advocacy, legal education, and subject-matter support for legal services advocates. In the wake of HR1, she has focused on administrative advocacy, community education, and systems change efforts aimed at preventing erroneous losses of health coverage and other benefits. In addition to her public benefits practice, Elly has litigated extensively in support of immigrants and refugees, including significant appellate advocacy in state and federal courts. She serves on the Social Security Council of the State Bar of Michigan and teaches courses on children's law and asylum at Michigan State University College of Law. Early in her legal career, she clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as editor-in-chief of the Michigan State Law Review.

Adrianna is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Her research examines the administrative burdens people encounter when navigating the social safety net, with a focus on Medicaid and the ACA Marketplaces, and the politics of health reform in the United States. This work draws on a variety of empirical methods, including surveys, quasi-experimental approaches, and randomized policy trials. Dr. McIntyre graduated with a PhD from Harvard University's interdisciplinary health policy program. She also holds a Master in Public Health and a Master in Public Policy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Prior to entering her doctoral studies, she was a David A. Winston Health Policy Fellow in Washington, DC, where she served in the office of Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Sam Stragand is the senior program manager for the Detroit Partnership on Economic Mobility at Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, where he works with community partners to conduct research and evaluation projects in Detroit, many focused around housing. Stragand recently co-authored a pair of briefs detailing the challenges of Detroit's homeowners insurance landscape, based on survey and interview data, and providing recommendations for policy interventions to increase both the uptake and quality of homeowners insurance. Prior to that, Stragand co-authored the Harms Report for the Detroit Reparations Task Force, focusing on Detroit's history of housing discrimination and its present-day consequences. Stragand has a JD from Washington University in St. Louis and an MPP from the Ford School at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Poverty Solutions, Stragand practiced landlord-tenant and housing discrimination law at fair housing organizations in both St. Louis and Detroit, and co-founded a nonprofit, the St. Louis Mediation Project, focused on providing no-cost mediations in St. Louis' housing courts. Stragand also taught courses on landlord-tenant law and mediation as an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law. Stragand grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Grinnell College in Iowa. After graduating, Stragand served two years in Peace Corps Turkmenistan.

Lan Deng is Professor and Chair of the Urban & Regional Planning Program at the University of Michigan, where she teaches courses on housing, real estate, and local public finance. Her research focuses on housing policy and affordable housing development in the U.S. and China. As a planning scholar, she is particularly interested in examining the different types of interventions that countries have developed to improve housing and neighborhood outcomes for their residents. The interventions she studied include major government housing programs as well as community-based initiatives. In Detroit she has conducted research to examine how affordable housing developments funded by the Low-income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program have helped promote neighborhood revitalization and how community-based efforts have helped stabilized neighborhoods during the 2008 Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis. Her recent work in Detroit has examined the challenges and efforts in preserving the city's affordable housing stock. At the University of Michigan, she co-founded the Collective for Equitable Housing (CEH) initiative. Deng holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. and B.S. from Peking University, China.

Hanneke van Deursen is the Director of Special Projects at the Chicago Residential Investment Fund, where she designs and implements innovative strategies to develop affordable housing that does not rely on federal subsidy. Previously, she served as Director of Housing Finance for the City of Chattanooga, where she designed the city's award-winning affordable housing tax abatement program and founded Invest Chattanooga, a $20 million public investment fund supporting mixed-income housing.

With a background in architecture, her work focuses on making housing policy and finance more efficient and scalable. As a researcher, she made the Dutch social housing model accessible for an international policy audience. Her writing has been published by Shelterforce, the National Leagues of Cities, and the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. Hanneke holds a Master in Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University.

Nicole Sherard-Freeman became president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan in January 2025. Since the Community Foundation's inception, it has distributed more than $1.4 billion through approximately 95,000 grants, mostly to nonprofit organizations throughout Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Washtenaw, St. Clair and Livingston counties.

Sherard-Freeman joined the Community Foundation in July 2023 as chief operating officer with responsibility for donor services, finance, grantmaking services and initiatives. She co-led the development of the organization's 10-year strategic plan.

Before joining the Community Foundation, Sherard-Freeman was group executive of Jobs, Economy & Detroit at Work, and executive director of the Mayor's Workforce Development Board for Mayor Mike Duggan, City of Detroit.

Sherard-Freeman joined the City of Detroit in 2019 as the executive director of Workforce Development and Detroit at Work. Prior to that, she served as the president and CEO of Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation. From 2014 to 2018, Sherard-Freeman was managing director of Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, a national research-to-action nonprofit that most notably led JPMorgan Chase's New Skills at Work portfolio in Detroit. She also held leadership positions in banking and global business-to-business services, and she was a successful entrepreneur in metro Detroit for three years.

Born and raised in Detroit, Sherard-Freeman is a proud graduate of the Detroit Public Schools system. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and has completed graduate studies in Organizational Management and Development at Fielding Graduate University.

Sherard-Freeman serves on boards governing the Detroit Economic Club, Downtown Detroit Partnership, Detroit Sports Commission, Invest Detroit, Detroit Future City and WorkRise: An Urban Institute Initiative. She is a senior advisor to the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy – Poverty Solutions Initiative. She previously served on the boards of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Workforce Advisory Council, Governor's Workforce Development Board, Schoolcraft College Foundation and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.

Sherard-Freeman has been recognized for her leadership, including the Michigan Chronicle's Women of Excellence and Power 50; Crain's Detroit Business' Notable Women in Nonprofits, 50 Names to Know in Government, the 2021 and 2025 class of 100 Most Influential Women in Michigan; and Axios Detroit's 2022 Power Players.

Professor Shaefer is currently on leave from the University of Michigan and is serving as the City of Detroit's first-ever Chief Executive of Health, Human Services and Poverty Solutions.

H. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D. is the Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Policy and Social Justice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. From 2016-2026, he also served as the inaugural director of Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, an interdisciplinary, presidential initiative that partners with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty.

Shaefer's research on poverty and social welfare policy has been published in top peer-reviewed academic journals in the fields of public policy, medicine, public health, sociology, and history, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and U.S. Census Bureau among other sources. He has presented his research at the White House and before numerous federal agencies, has testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, and has advised a number of the nation's largest human service providers.

He was the co-founder of Rx Kids, the nation's first community-wide prenatal and infant health cash prescription program that launched in Flint, Michigan in January 2024 and is now active in more than 30 rural and urban communities across Michigan. Through Poverty Solutions, Shaefer acted as a special counselor on anti-poverty policy to the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services from 2019-2021.

Natasha Pilkauskas is a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Her research considers how demographic, social safety net, and economic shifts in the U.S. affect families and children with low-incomes. One strand of her research focuses on the living arrangements of children‚ especially those who live in multigenerational households. A second aspect of her work considers economic insecurity, poverty and family wellbeing. A third area focuses on how cash transfer policies, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, might improve the developmental and life trajectories of children living in poverty. Pilkauskas' current research projects include several studies of both the Earned Income Tax Credit and the 2021 Child Tax Credit.

Katherine Michelmore is a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Michelmore is a leading scholar and educator on the social safety net, education policy, labor economics, and economic demography. A research associate at NBER, she is a recognized expert on the efficacy of the Earned Income Tax Credit and its impact on children. Previously, she was assistant professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School. Katherine completed her PhD in policy analysis and management at Cornell University. She holds a BA in economics and psychology from Wesleyan University. Prior to obtaining her PhD, Katherine was a research assistant at the Urban Institute.

Stephanie Hogenson serves as the Acting Assistant Commissioner and Executive Director for Minnesota's Children's Cabinet, an interagency partnership that works to center children in state government and align state agencies around policies and initiatives that improve the lives of Minnesota's children, youth, and families. She was previously the Policy Director for the Children's Cabinet since August 2019. Prior to that, Stephanie worked at Children's Defense Fund-Minnesota for nearly 10 years directing web-based tools to improve access to and policies for public work support programs and tax credits and leading policy development, research, and coalition work across areas of child wellbeing with focus on family economic stability, health care, and child care and early education access and affordability. She also served as Minnesota's KIDS COUNT Director, tracking, analyzing, and sharing data on child wellbeing. Prior to her role at CDF-MN, Stephanie worked in direct service with people with developmental disabilities and supporting lower income, first-generation students in college enrollment and success. She has degrees in Social Work and Print Journalism from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and was a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Policy. In her free time she likes having fun with her two kids, running around Minnesota's lakes, exploring the outdoors, and reading good books.

Christopher Wimer directs the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at the Columbia University School of Social Work. He is also a Principal Investigator on the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker, which measures poverty and wellbeing in New York City. Wimer conducts research on the measurement of poverty, as well as historical trends in poverty and the impacts of social policies on the poverty rate. He also focuses on how families cope with poverty and economic insecurity, with a particular focus on how families manage food insecurity and other forms of material hardship. His work pays particular attention to the role of government policies and programs and their potential impacts on the wellbeing of low-income families and children.

Wimer's work has been featured in leading scientific journals including Demography, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Social Service Review, Social Science Research, Criminology, and the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Wimer received his PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University.

Christina Weiland is Professor at the Marsal Family School of Education and the Karl and Martha Kohn Professor of Social Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she is affiliated with the Educational Studies department and the Combined Program in Psychology and Education program. She co-directs the Education Policy Initiative (with Dr. Kevin Stange) and directs the University of Michigan's Predoctoral Training Program in Causal Inference in Education Policy Research. Dr. Weiland's research focuses on the effects of early childhood interventions and public policies on children's development, especially on children from families with low incomes. She is particularly interested in the active ingredients that drive children's gains in successful, at-scale public preschool programs. She is also interested in quantitative research methods, educational measurement, and developmental processes research. Her work is also characterized by strong, long-standing research collaborations with practitioners, particularly the Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood.

Tanya S. Wright is a Professor of Early Literacy at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan. Wright's scholarship focuses on literacy instruction during the early childhood and elementary years. Her work is driven by a commitment to ensuring that young children receive high quality early literacy instruction from the start of school.

Wright is an author of several books for teachers and parents including: "A Parent's Guide to Reading With Your Young Child" (Scholastic), "Nurturing Knowledge: Building a Foundation for School Success by Linking Early Literacy to Math, Science, Art, and Social Studies" (Scholastic), "All About Words: Increasing Vocabulary in the Common Core" Classroom: PreK-2 (Teachers College Press), "A Teacher's Guide to Vocabulary Development Across the Day: Grades K-3" (Heinemann) and "Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers: Key Practices for Educators" (NAEYC). Her work has been published in journals such as American Educational Research Journal, American Educator, The Elementary School Journal, The Reading Teacher, Reading and Writing, Reading Research Quarterly, Scientific Studies of Reading, and the Journal of Teacher Education.

Wright's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, OpenSciEd, and the CREATE for STEM institute. Wright was the winner of the International Literacy Association Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2012 and the Jerry Johns Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award in 2022.

She is the lead author of the SOLID Start curriculum (Science, Oral Language, and Literacy Development from the Start of School), which is an open access science and disciplinary literacy curriculum for grades K-2. Wright led the literacy integration team and co-led the K-2 instructional design team for the OpenSciEd Elementary curriculum development project.