Press Releases

News from EPI Valerie Wilson Joins EPI as Director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy

Valerie Rawlston Wilson joins the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) as the director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE), a nationally recognized source for expert reports and policy analyses on the economic condition of America’s people of color. Prior to joining EPI, Wilson was an economist and vice president of research at the National Urban League Washington Bureau, where she was responsible for planning and directing the National Urban League’s research agenda.

“Valerie Wilson will be a great leader of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, building on the work that Algernon Austin oversaw since the program’s start more than five years ago,” said EPI President Lawrence Mishel. “Valerie has the research skills and the policy knowledge to have a real impact on our national discussion of racial and ethnic disparities and how to eliminate them.”

“EPI’s research and analysis have been invaluable to me over the course of my career and I am honored to join the organization as we continue to give voice and validity to the economic condition of people of color in America,” said Wilson.

Wilson has written extensively on various issues impacting economic inequality in the United States—including employment and training, income and wealth disparities, access to higher education, and social insurance—and has also appeared in print, television, and radio media. In 2010, through the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs, she was selected to deliver the keynote address at an event on Minority Economic Empowerment at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. In 2011, Wilson served on a National Academies Panel on Measuring and Collecting Pay Information from U.S. Employers by Gender, Race, and National Origin.

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