Staff Directory

Yajun Jia is a Survey Methodologist at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work where she provides statistical support in survey research. Her areas of interest include sampling, measuring, and weighting diverse populations, nonresponse error and bias analysis, and sampling frames. She holds a PhD in Psychology from Texas A&M University.

Xiaofang Liu is a Study Coordinator at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. Her work focuses on managing the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker Study Chinese Oversample.  She holds a Ph.D. in Social Work from Fordham University and an MSW from the University of Hong Kong. With over twenty-five years of professional experience, Xiaofang has a diverse background encompassing gerontological service, medical social work, palliative and end-of-life care, NGO management, and social work research in China and the United States.

Sophie Collyer is a Research Director at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University where she works across the center’s federal, state, and local portfolios. She works closely with data from the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker to assess the dynamics of poverty and disadvantage in New York City, and also evaluates the impacts of anti-poverty policies at the national and local level, with a particular focus on tax policy. Collyer began working with the center as a graduate student at Columbia where she completed a dual-degree (MPA/MSW) at the School of International and Public Affairs and the School of Social Work. Collyer is also a doctoral student in social policy at Columbia University.

Sonia Huq is the Communications Associate at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. She oversees the communications program to expand the reach of the center’s research and policy analysis to researchers, advocates, policymakers and the press. She is also currently pursuing a Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia University. Huq has worked in non-profit, academic, feminist and labor organizations in Washington D.C. and New York City.

Sonia Huq hails from a Bangladeshi-American immigrant community in Florida and is passionate about working towards a more just society. She began her career at Manavi, the first South Asian women’s rights organization in the United States. She received her Master’s in Public Policy from the George Washington University and subsequently worked as a legislative fellow on Capitol Hill (awarded by the Women’s Congressional Policy Institute.) Huq has worked at the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations and campaigns. Also alum of the University of Florida and the AmeriCorps*National Community Civilian Corps. 

Schuyler Ross is a Data Manager at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. He contributes mainly to the Poverty Tracker and Early Childhood Poverty Tracker, two longitudinal survey-based studies of poverty and hardship in New York City. His work focuses on cleaning, cataloging, and validating survey data, as well as public outreach and various analytic forays. Schuyler completed a BA in Sociology and concentration in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley.

Sarah Bohn is vice president and director of the PPIC Economic Policy Center and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where she holds the John and Louise Bryson chair in policy research. She is also a member of the PPIC Higher Education Center. As the founding director of the PPIC Economic Policy Center, she leads research and engagement to inform California policymaking to support greater opportunity and upward mobility for workers, families, and businesses statewide. A labor economist, her research focuses on the job market, workforce skills, and the role of education and government programs in upward mobility. Her other areas of expertise include immigration policy, poverty measurement, income inequality, and career technical education. Her work has been published in major academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Demography, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and The Review of Economics and Statistics. Previously she served as vice president of research at PPIC. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Sally Ma is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. She is also a student at Columbia College. 

Rebecca Ortiz is a Research Analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Her work spans evaluating the effectiveness of existing safety net programs and projecting the poverty impact of future policy changes using Census data and microsimulation models. Prior to joining the center, she was a Policy Research Assistant at the Center for an Urban Future. Ortiz graduated from the University at Buffalo with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Economics where she was a part of the University Honors College and McNair Scholars program.

Owen Dulac is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. He is also a student at Columbia College.

Oscar Uhalde is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. He studies Sociology and Political Science at Columbia College.

Michelle Corbeaux is the Grants Manager at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. 

Megan A. Curran is the Director of Policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. Her work explores how the tax system and social safety net can better support children and families and how lessons learned from strategies to reduce child poverty can be shared across countries. She has a particular interest in the Child Tax Credit and how the structure and impact of child allowance programs long in place elsewhere might inform the creation of a national child allowance in the United States. Curran has worked as a policy researcher on child and family poverty and policy solutions in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland, including as a legislative fellow in the United States House of Representatives and a legislative aide in the Scottish Parliament. She holds a PhD in Social Policy from University College Dublin, Ireland.

Maya Sakellarios is a Public Affairs and Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. She is also currently a student at the University of Florida studying political science and history.

Lolita Colon is a Study Coordinator on the Poverty Tracker Studies at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. With more than 20 years of experience at the school, she also holds a MSW from the Columbia School of Social Work. 

Lily Peterson is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. She is also currently a student at the Columbia School of Social Work.

Lily Bushman-Copp is a Study Coordinator at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. She holds an MPH in Community Health from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy.

Katherine Michelmore is an associate 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.

José Caballero is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. He is also a student at Columbia College. 

Jiwan Lee is a social policy researcher whose work examines how poverty and public policies affect the economic security and well-being of families and children. Her research focuses on the impacts of safety net programs and work-family policies, with particular attention to disparities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Lee earned her PhD in Social Welfare Policy from Columbia University and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University.

Jill Gandhi is a Research Scientist at NORC, University of Chicago. Her research explores the role of early childhood care and education in children’s development of academic and social-emotional skills. Her work emphasizes the experiences of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families to inform child and family policies aimed at improving children’s developmental outcomes. As a postdoctoral research scientist at the Columbia University School of Social Work, Gandhi worked on the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker, a joint project of the school's population and poverty research centers with the non-profit Robin Hood. Gandhi holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology from New York University.

Jessica Pac, PhD is a social policy expert with extensive training in applied economics and causal inference, whose work broadly examines the consequences of social policies in terms of child maltreatment and disparities in health and human capital, as well as the consequences of such disparities. Jessica’s dissertation provides quasi-experimental evidence on novel policy solutions for the prevention of maltreatment among young children, including studies on Medicaid, Early Childhood Education and Care Programs, and state LIHEAP cooling programs to ameliorate the maltreatment effects of ambient heat. Her current program of research examines opportunities for leveling the playing field by improving the health and well-being of infants and children with a focus on mandatory reporting among pediatricians, work-family policies such as Paid Family Leave and Universal Pre-Kindergarten, and safety net programs as they impact poverty and inequality. Jessica’s research draws upon an array of econometric, statistical, and computational methods, and through her experience has developed a penchant for quasi-experimental designs and machine learning using administrative data.

Jessica received her PhD in Social Welfare with a concentration in Economics and Social Policy at Columbia University School of Social Work. She also holds an MPA with a concentration in Social Policy from Cornell University and a BA in International and Public Affairs from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Jane Waldfogel is the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor for the Prevention of Children’s and Youth Problems, co-director of the Columbia Population Research Center, and a visiting professor at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics.

She has written extensively on the impact public policies have on the well-being of children and families. Her most recent book, Too Many Children Left Behind: The U.S. Achievement Gap in Comparative Perspective (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015), assesses how social mobility varies in the United States compared with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She is the author of five other books, including most recently Britain’s War on Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), Steady Gains and Stalled Progress: Inequality and the Black-White Test Score Gap (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), and What Children Need (Harvard University Press, 2006). Waldfogel has served as president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a fellow at the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Waldfogel holds a BA in Psychology and Social Relations from Radcliffe College, an MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a PhD in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Jaclyn Sawyer is a Product Manager at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work.

Irwin Garfinkel co-founded the Center on Poverty and Social Policy with Christopher Wimer in 2014. A social worker and economist by training,  he continues to be involved as an affiliated researcher with the center after retiring from Columbia University in 2022. His most recent research focuses on the benefits and costs of a universal child allowance, child care, and paid leave. He also served on the National Academy of Science Panel that produced the 2019 report “A roadmap to reducing child poverty.” In addition, Garfinkel works on the Robin Hood funded New York City Poverty Tracker project. 

Throughout his career, Dr. Garfinkel has conducted research on the costs and benefits of welfare state programs. He has focused on the economic insecurity of single mothers and their children and policies designed to increase their security. In partnership with Sara McLanahan, Garfinkel developed the Future of Families and Child Well-being Study that has become an important national resource on the population of unmarried parents and their children. 

Dr. Garfinkel is the author of Wealth and Welfare States: Is America Laggard or Leader? as well as over 200 articles and 16 books or edited volumes on poverty, income transfers, program evaluation, single-parent families and child support, gene-environment interactions, and the welfare state. 

Dr. Garfinkel holds a BA in History from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA in Social Work from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Social Work and Economics from the University of Michigan.

Hye-Min Jung is a Doctoral Research Assistant at the Columbia School of Social Work. She is investigating child protective service involvement in early life and its impact on young adult outcomes, such as education and employment. Jung works on the the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study dataset in collaboration with Princeton and Columbia University. 

Graduate of Columbia School of Social Work. Former Doctoral Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

Eunha Kim is a Doctoral Research Assistant. Her research interests focus on family and child well-being, parenthood and work-family balance, and work-family policies. She works with the Center to investigate the effects of COVID-19 economic relief programs on families' material hardship. Eunha Kim is a doctoral student in social policy and policy analysis at Columbia University. 

David B. Harris is the Executive Director of Children’s Research and Education Institute, a partner at Kids Project, a senior research fellow at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, an advisory board member of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard University, an affiliate of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University, and a senior research fellow at UNICEF Innocenti, Global Office for Research and Foresight. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Welfare from Columbia University. 

Danielle Wilson is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. She holds a PhD in Economics from American University.

Daniel Salgado is a Research Analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

Christopher Yera is a Research Analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. He conducts data analyses of policy proposals aimed at reducing poverty and economic insecurity and microsimulation analyses of potential policy reforms at the local and national levels. Yera began working at the center as an undergraduate student at the university, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Columbia College.

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.

Christopher Pulliam is a Doctoral Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. He is also a student at the Columbia School of Social Work.

Christal Hamilton is an Assistant Professor at the UConn School of Public Policy. Christal was previously a postdoctoral research scientist and is now a senior research fellow at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Her research agenda focuses on the impact of socioeconomic inequality on vulnerable groups and the role of public policy in reducing existing socioeconomic disparities or increasing social mobility. Her current research examines the impact of Medicaid expansion on young adult health-related outcomes, immigrant health and wellbeing, the changing circumstances of young adults, and experiences of hardship around childbirth.

Christal received her Ph.D. in Public Affairs from the University of Missouri in July 2021. She also holds a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Missouri and a B.Sc. in International Relations from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Prior to academia Christal worked as an elementary and secondary school teacher and in the research department of the inaugural child protection agency in Trinidad and Tobago.

Chloe Cargill is a Study Coordinator at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. 

Buyi Wang is a Research Analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. He conducts benefit-cost analysis of state and national policies, such as child allowance, subsidized child care, paid family leave, and college assistance programs. Wang holds a Masters degree in Economics from New York University.

Anghelo Chavira-Barrera is a Research Assistant at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. He is also a student at Columbia College, Class of 2028. 

Anastasia Koutavas is a Research Analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy in the Columbia School of Social Work. In her research, she utilizes data from the Poverty Tracker to analyze urban inequality and social networks within New York City. Her work also involves national policy microsimulations which primarily aim to measure the anti-poverty impact of programs like SNAP and the EITC. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Economics and International Studies from Vassar College.