Speaker biographies
Katherine Haley is the legislative assistant on social policy for U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). She advises Hoekstra on issues including health, education, welfare, and housing, and drafts legislation, talking points, and policy briefs relating to these issues. Her legislative priorities focus on health care and improving patient access to health-care services, as well as advising Hoekstra on education issues related to his responsibilities on the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Doug Mesecar is the acting assistant secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD) at the Department of Education. The OPEPD oversees budget activities, policy planning, and evaluation with Department of Education offices as well as with the Office of Management and Budget, the House and Senate education committees, and state education associations. Mesecar joined the Department of Education in 2003 as chief of staff in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. From 2004–05, he was chief of staff in the Office of the Secretary. Prior to joining the Department of Education, Mesecar worked on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce at the time the panel wrote the No Child Left Behind legislation.
Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at AEI. His research areas include culture, human intelligence and social structure, marriage, family and social mores, crime, and libertarianism. Murray first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980. This was followed in 1988 by In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, in 1994 by The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein), in 1997 by What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation, and in 2003 by Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. His latest book is In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (AEI Press, 2006).
Derek Neal is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He served on the faculty board at University of Wisconsin from 1998–2001. He served as an advisory editor for Economics Letters and as a co-editor for the Journal of Human Resources, and is currently editor in chief of the Journal of Labor Economics. In late 2006, he began work on a project with Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach to evaluate what can be learned about the likely effects of the No Child Left Behind Act from individual data on high-stakes testing outcomes in Chicago public schools.
Henry Olsen is vice president and director of the National Research Initiative (NRI). He disseminates and publicizes the Institute’s work to the academic community, works with AEI’s visiting, adjunct, and NRI research fellows, commissions and supervises NRI projects, and oversees the production of NRI publications. Mr. Olsen previously served as vice president for programs at the Manhattan Institute and as a judicial clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Danny J. Boggs.
Susan Traiman is the director of education and workforce policy at the Business Roundtable. She oversees activities for chief executive officers of leading corporations interested in improving education performance and workforce competitiveness in the United States. Previously, Traiman was the education policies studies director at the National Governors Association, where she coordinated assistance to governors in developing and implementing systemic education reform strategies. She was also a senior associate with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and served on the staff of the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
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