Uneven Outcomes in the Labor Market

Kristy Buzard

Associate Professor of Economics
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University

Kristy Buzard, associate professor of economics in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is part of a research team that recently received funding from the Women in Economics and Mathematics Research Consortium to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to gender disparities in economics professions. The research team for the project, “What Attracts and Deters Women from Economics,” includes Laura Gee of Tufts University as principal investigator and Olga Stoddard of Brigham Young University and Buzard as co-principal investigators. Using the $157,065 grant, they will investigate the causes of women’s underrepresentation in economics and design interventions to increase the low rates of participation by women in the field. The project involves a field experiment across multiple sites and stages of professional development, including high school and entering college.

Buzard is a Melvin A. Eggers Economics Faculty Scholar and senior research associate for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. In addition to issues of gender inequality, her work explores international trade agreements and how international institutions, domestic politics and economic and legal arrangements impact cooperation on trade and related issues.

Chandra Childers

Senior Policy and Economic Analyst
Economic Policy Institute

Chandra Childers is a senior policy and economic analyst with the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) at EPI. Her work is primarily focused on supporting EARN’s state and local policy research and advocacy network in the Southern United States. Childers is committed to economic justice and ensuring that all workers have a voice in their workplaces and that they experience real economic security independent of race, sex, or economic status. Using an intersectional lens, her research focuses on employment, earnings, job quality, and worker power. 

Before joining the EARN team at EPI, Childers was a Study Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, where her work focused on occupational segregation, the gender wage gap, and Black, Hispanic, and Native American women’s access to good jobs that pay well, provide benefits, and ensure economic security for them, their families, and their communities.

Susan M. Collins

President & Chief Executive Officer
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Susan M. Collins is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which is part of the U.S. central bank. She is a participant on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. monetary policy. Since taking office in July 2022, Collins oversees all of the bank’s activities – including economic research and analysis, banking supervision and financial stability efforts, community economic development activities, and a wide range of payments, technology, and finance initiatives.

Collins is an international macroeconomist with a lifelong interest in policy and its impact on living standards. She has published widely and served as a provost, dean, professor, research scholar, and board member at a variety of universities and organizations, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago where she served as a director for nine years.

Earlier in her career Susan spent 16 years living in Massachusetts – as an assistant then associate professor at Harvard University, earning a PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as an undergraduate at Harvard.

Evgeniya Duzhak

Regional Policy Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Evgeniya Duzhak is a Regional Policy Economist in the Economic Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Evgeniya joined the bank in 2015 as an Education Research Advisor where she conducted research related to economic education and evaluated education programs developed by the Economic Education group. Prior to joining the Fed, she was a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and on the faculty of the City University of New York’s Zicklin School of Business.

Evgeniya has published her work in many academic journals and has presented at leading academic conferences. Evgeniya holds a B.S. in Economics and Mathematics from Novosibirsk State University in Russia, and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Kansas.

Jennifer Fernandez

Senior Community Development Analyst
Federal Reserve Board of Governors

For over ten years, Jennifer Fernandez has worked in housing and economic development in both San Francisco and Washington, DC. Jennifer found her passion for community development issues while interning for former San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar and later through her work at Bay Area LISC. In 2013, Jennifer relocated to Washington, DC to pursue her graduate degree in public policy at American University. During the course of her degree, Jennifer served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at NeighborWorks America. Since 2016, Jennifer has worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governor’s Community Development team specializing in economic and financial inclusion. 

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of San Francisco and a Master’s in Public Policy from American University. Jennifer resides in Silver Spring, MD with her husband, two daughters and dalmatian-beagle mix, Boba Fett.

Leah Gjertson

Senior Researcher
Chapin Hall, University of Chicago

Leah Gjertson is a Senior Researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Dr. Gjertson conducts applied research focused on the economic security and wellbeing of children, youth, and families and improving public systems using administrative data analysis, program evaluation, and survey research. Her recent portfolio includes projects examining program and policy issues in early care and education, juvenile justice re-entry programming, sexual misconduct reporting procedures in high schools, and a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a college access and success program. She has served on the University of Chicago Crown-Chapin Hall Institutional Review Board since 2017.

Gjertson’s work is informed by training in social work and law as well as prior public sector experience in child welfare and criminal justice with the Iowa Office of the Attorney General, Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and the Middleton Center for Children’s Rights. Gjertson holds a PhD in Social Welfare and a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Juris Doctor from Drake University Law School.

Richard Reeves

President
American Institute for Boys and Men

Richard Reeves is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, which he founded in 2023 to raise awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for effective solutions. His 2022 book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, was described as a “landmark” in The New York Times and named a book of the year by both The Economist and The New Yorker.

Richard is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, where he previously directed the Future of the Middle-Class Initiative and the Center on Children and Families. His research focuses on boys and men, inequality, and social mobility. In September 2017, Politico magazine named Richard one of the top 50 thinkers in the U.S. for his work on class and inequality.

A Brit-American, Richard was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2012. Other previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think tank; social affairs editor of the Observer; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform; and research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Richard is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year. He has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University.

Huanan Xu

Associate Professor of Economics
Indiana University, South Bend

Dr. Huanan Xu is an associate professor of economics at Indiana University South Bend and a senior research associate at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. Dr. Xu’s research interests include labor market dynamics, unemployment and discrimination, immigration, public policy, and education. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Public Economics, Labour Economics, Economic Inquiry, Southern Economic Journal, Applied Economics, Research in Labor Economics, and IZA Journal of Development and Migration.