Leadership

Dr. El-Sayed is a public servant, Michigan politician, former public health professor, and a medical doctor. He served as executive director of the Detroit Health Department and Health Officer for the city from 2015 to 2017, before running for governor of Michigan.

Lori Lightfoot served as Chicago's mayor from 2019-2023. She is the second woman, first Black female and first openly gay person in that role. Before becoming mayor, Lightfoot served as senior equity partner in the Litigation and Conflict Resolution…

Kenneth Lowande studies American political institutions and policymaking.

Udow-Phillips provides strategic consulting and mentorship to advance social justice, improve population health and strengthen the effectiveness of health, public health and mental health systems.

Brian Flanagan is founder and principal of the Water's Edge Leadership Institute. He is a trained coach and leadership development entrepreneur. At the University of Michigan, he is a lecturer in public policy and chief evangelist of the Sanger Leadership Center, where he served for almost a decade as the founding managing director.

John Hieftje, Ann Arbor’s longest serving mayor (2000-14), is a lecturer at the Ford School. In 2001 he initiated a long-term drive for greater efficiency that prepared the city for the Great Recession. Hieftje championed the successful Greenbelt…

John J.H. "Joe" Schwarz is a lecturer at the Ford School. He received his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Michigan in 1959, and his medical degree from Wayne State University in 1964. Dr. Schwarz served his residency in…

Henry has written and published on the political economy of social voice, memory, trauma, identity, peace processes, Truth Commissions, international transitional justice and international humanitarian law. His research and writing projects focus on how structural and administrative violence come to be institutionalized during post-colonial transitions. His current work is on the discourse of human rights, structural violence and the politics of official voice.

Hernandez is an internationally recognized scholar with deep expertise in applying behavioral science insights to design and improve organizational systems and decision-making practices. She is widely published in top-tier academic journals and popular media outlets, and serves on several editorial boards. At Michigan, Hernandez teaches courses on leadership and serves as faculty director of the Ford School's Leadership Initiative.

A social demographer, Lantz studies the role of public policy in improving population health and reducing social disparities in health. She is currently engaged in research regarding innovative financing approaches for supportive housing among Medicaid beneficiaries, and also on how COVID-19 is exacerbating existing social and health inequalities in the U.S.

Morenoff's research interests include neighborhood environments, inequality, crime and criminal justice, the social determinants of health, racial/ethnic/immigrant disparities in health and antisocial behavior, and methods for analyzing multilevel and spatial data.

Donald Moynihan is the Ford School’s J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy. Previously he served as Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy Chair of Public Policy and the director of the La Follette School at the…

Page applies her vast foreign policy experience to the Weiser Diplomacy Center. She has served the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations in senior roles for decades, across East, Central, and Southern Africa, and in Haiti and Nepal. Page was the first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan and served as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in Haiti.

Attia Qureshi is a lecturer in negotiations at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and in communications at the Ross School of Business. An organizational culture consultant, she lays the groundwork for progress and…

Tompkins-Stange is a scholar of education policy and philanthropy, focusing on the influence of private foundations on the politics of K-12 school reform.

Prior to coming to the Ford School, Cindy spent more than 22 years in the University of Michigan's Washington DC office where she served as a liaison for the University with Congress, the Administration and national higher education associations on…