EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Time:	9:00 AM -- 4:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI

Speaker biographies

Robert Gordon is associate director for education, income maintenance, and labor at the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to serving in the Obama administration, Mr. Gordon was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on education and domestic policy. While on leave from the center in 2006 and 2007, he served as a senior adviser to the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, leading an overhaul of the city's multibillion dollar school budgeting system and developing new human capital initiatives. Prior to joining American Progress in 2005, he was domestic policy director for the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign. He previously worked for Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) as Judiciary Committee counsel, legislative director, and policy director on his first presidential campaign. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gordon was a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Skadden Fellow at the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where he represented children in abuse and neglect proceedings. He also served in the Clinton White House as an aide to the National Economic Council and the Office of National Service, helping craft the legislation creating AmeriCorps.

Ron Haskins is a senior fellow in the economic studies program and codirector of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. He is also a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. Mr. Haskins is the author of Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (Brookings, 2006), the coauthor of Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America (Pew Charitable Trusts and Brookings, 2008), and a senior editor of the journal The Future of Children. In 2002, he was a senior adviser to the president on welfare policy. Prior to joining Brookings and Casey, Mr. Haskins spent fourteen years on the staff of the House Committee on Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff, then as the subcommittee's staff director. While serving on the subcommittee, he was editor of the 1996, 1998, and 2000 editions of the Green Book. From 1981 to 1985, he served as a senior researcher at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Michael Hayes is the deputy for family initiatives in the Child Support Division of the Texas Office of the Attorney General. He has extensive experience in the development of policy, partnerships, and projects that support family stability, paternity establishment, father involvement, and child support program improvement. He has led the implementation of numerous child support demonstration projects and helped establish statewide initiatives educating teens about parental responsibility, providing legal services to parents with visitation and custody issues, and directing unemployed noncustodial parents to workforce services. Previously, Mr. Hayes helped create and was director of the Texas Fragile Families Initiative, a statewide initiative bringing together more than thirty private foundations, multiple state agencies, and community/faith-based organizations in twelve sites across Texas to support fragile families.

Diedra Henry-Spires is the professional staff for human services and income policy for the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. Her portfolio includes TANF and related programs, child care, child welfare, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, unemployment insurance, and women's issues. Ms. Henry-Spires began her tenure at the Finance Committee in 2006 as a Brookings Institute Legis Fellow. Previously, she served for ten years at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In her last position there, she served as the principal public health adviser on violence against women for the Office on Women's Health and developed national policies in violence against women, HIV/AIDS, and young women's health. She also developed and administered contracts and grants to address policy objectives related to women's issues.

Erin Jacobs is a research analyst at the Manpower Demonstration and Research Corporation, where she works on the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration, the hard-to-employ evaluation, and the evaluation of the Rikers Island Single Stop program. Previously, Ms. Jacobs and Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, conducted an evaluation of the ComALERT prisoner reentry program in Brooklyn, New York.

Robert Lerman is a professor of economics at American University and an institute fellow at the Urban Institute. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Berlin, Germany. He has published research and policy analyses on employment, income support, and youth development, especially as they affect low-income populations. In the 1970s, he worked on reforming the nation’s income maintenance programs and on youth employment policies as staff economist for both the congressional Joint Economic Committee and the U.S. Department of Labor. He was one of the first scholars to examine the patterns and economic determinants of unwed fatherhood and to propose a youth apprenticeship strategy in the United States. Mr. Lerman served on the National Academy of Sciences panel examining the U.S. postsecondary education and training system for the workplace. He has testified before congressional committees on youth apprenticeship, child support policies, and the information technology labor market. His recent research deals with the impact of family structure on employment and earnings, with assets for low-income families, and with apprenticeship in the United States and other countries.

Lisa Jo Marks is the interim director for the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services, Wisconsin's largest social service agency. The department administers programs and provides services to over 250,000 clients in the areas of income maintenance, behavioral health, disability services, and delinquency. Ms. Marks was previously the director for the Milwaukee County Department of Child Support, were she operated the state's largest child support agency, requiring case management of 144,000 cases, or 44 percent of the state of Wisconsin's child support caseload; approximately two hundred staff members; and a $21 million departmental budget. Ms. Marks is a member of the National Child Support Enforcement Association, the Wisconsin Child Support Enforcement Association, the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative Advisory Board, and the Milwaukee Fatherhood Collaborative.

Lawrence M. Mead is a professor of politics and public policy at New York University and a visiting scholar at AEI. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin. He has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Mr. Mead is an expert on the problems of poverty and welfare in the United States. Among academics, he was the principal exponent of work requirements in welfare, the approach that now dominates national policy. He is also a leading scholar of the politics and implementation of welfare reform. He is the author of seven books and over a hundred other publications. Government Matters (Princeton University Press, 2004), his study of welfare reform in Wisconsin, was a cowinner of the 2005 Louis Brownlow Book Award, given by the National Academy of Public Administration.

Jeffrey D. Padden is the founder and president of Public Policy Associates, a firm that works across the nation in public policy research, development, and evaluation. For the past six years, Mr. Padden has led the firm's work as a partner with the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency in the leadership of the Michigan Prisoner ReEntry Initiative. Mr. Padden's experience of over thirty years in the public policy arena has included roles as deputy director of the Michigan Department of Commerce, director of the Governor's Human Investment Project, and five terms in the Michigan House of Representatives. As a legislator, he chaired the House Corrections Committee for eight years. Mr. Padden served as president of the Michigan Association for Evaluation from 1999 to 2003.

Kristin H. Ruth is a district court judge in Wake County, North Carolina. Judge Ruth is currently serving her third four-year term and concentrates most of her time in the enforcement of child support. She has been instrumental in implementing alternatives to incarceration and promotes employment resources, electronic house arrest, and mediation in the disposition of her cases. In 2000, Judge Ruth was awarded the North Carolina Child Support Council's Distinguished Service of Excellence Award. In 2003, she received the American Business Woman of the Year Award through the American Business Women's Association, and in 2004, she was awarded the Commissioner's Judge of the Year Award, presented to her by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. She currently serves on the board of Carolina Dispute Settlement Services and Carolina Correctional Services and is a member of the National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the Federal Judicial Child Support Task Force. She recently completed a three-year term on the Chief Justice's Commission for Professionalism. In 2008, Judge Ruth was awarded a three-year special improvement project grant from the Office of Child Support Enforcement to produce a best practice/policy manual and interactive website for her model problem-solving child support court.

Myles Schlank is a career employee with the Office of Child Support Enforcement in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he supervises staff who manage the child support innovation grant programs, child access and visitation grant program, and healthy marriage initiative. Previously at ACF's Office of Family Assistance, he directed staff who field-monitored welfare employment and training programs and gave technical assistance to state welfare agencies on a range of practice issues. He also was on HHS's adjunct training group as a trainer on supervisory skills, presentation skills, and stress management. Early in his career, Mr. Schlank worked for the Essex County, New Jersey, Division of Welfare, where he managed a field office income maintenance staff. He also taught Sociology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Mindy S. Tarlow is the executive director and chief executive officer of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a New York–based nonprofit corporation that provides employment services to men and women returning from prison and detention to New York City. CEO was created by the Vera Institute of Justice in the late 1970s and has been operating as an independent corporation since 1996. Ms. Tarlow began her association with CEO as a program director at the Vera Institute of Justice in 1994, where she managed the successful spinoff of CEO from Vera. Previously, she spent close to ten years at the New York City Office of Management and Budget, where she rose from senior analyst in 1984 to deputy director in 1992. Ms. Tarlow guided many criminal justice projects during her tenure in government, including coauthoring the Mayor's Safe Streets, Safe City Omnibus Criminal Justice Program.

Vicki Turetsky is director of family policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy, specializing in family issues including child support, low-income fathers, prisoner reentry, domestic violence, and marriage. She has extensive experience both as a state human services administrator and as an advocate for low-income families. She is a member of the National Fatherhood Leaders Group, the Council of State Governments Reentry Policy Council, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Prisoner Reentry Institute Advisory Committee. Previously, Ms. Turetsky served in the Minnesota Attorney General's Office and Department of Human Services; Union County Legal Services in New Jersey; the U.S. Corporation for National Services; and the Manpower Demonstration and Research Corporation, where she helped implement the Parents' Fair Share demonstration project for low-income fathers. She has received a number of awards for her work, including recognition by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, the National Child Support Enforcement Association, and the State of Minnesota.

Matt Weidinger is the Republican staff director for the Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee (formerly the Human Resources Subcommittee) on the House Committee on Ways and Means. Previously, Mr. Weidinger served as manager of government relations for the USX Corporation (representing U.S. Steel and Marathon Oil). From 1995 to 1999, he also served on the Ways and Means Committee staff. In 1999, he served as a professional staff member on the Social Security Subcommittee, where he specialized in Social Security reform proposals, among other measures. From 1995 through 1998, he served as a professional staff member on the Human Resources Subcommittee, where he assisted in drafting the 1996 Welfare Reform Law, including work, cash benefits, and disability policies. From 1990 through 1994, Mr. Weidinger served as a senior legislative assistant to Representative Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), for whom he focused on law enforcement, foreign affairs, health, and Social Security issues.