Jasmine Payne-Patterson (she/her) joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2023 as senior state policy strategist. She is a friend, advocate, scholar, and servant leader. An advocate for removing systemic barriers, she seeks to identify opportunities to combat intergenerational poverty, bolster socioeconomic mobility, and increase equity. Her key focus areas are economic empowerment, worker’s rights, housing, and social determinants of health.

Payne-Patterson has experience conducting research and advocating at the local, state, and federal levels, holding positions at many nonprofits, government agencies, and campaigns. Previously she worked in the United States House of Representatives, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, CARE, and the Atlanta Community Food Bank, as well as several other community-centered organizations. Committed to community involvement, Payne-Patterson has served on various boards including as the vice chair of the Georgia Piedmont Technical College Foundation board of trustees and formerly as the president of her homeowner’s association.

Payne-Patterson has been interviewed, cited or quoted by CNN, BET, Essence, Advocate Today, Malveaux!, Bloomberg News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and MLK50. Her work has been referenced by Reuters and NBC.

Believing that everyone can be a catalyst for change, she believes that “we are the ones that we have been waiting for.”

Education
Master of Public Administration with a Concentration in Urban Planning and Economic Development, Georgia State University
Bachelor of Arts in English, Spelman College

Labor economics • Stratification economics • Child poverty and well-being • Retirement security and public finance • Human development and capabilities

Biography

Ismael Cid-Martinez is an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE). He studies economic inequality and well-being within the frameworks of stratification economics, human development, and political economy. Cid-Martinez has co-authored and published peer-reviewed research on child poverty and welfare, intergroup disparities, retirement security and public finance, and the capability approach.

Prior to joining EPI, Cid-Martinez served as a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, where he authored reports on economic inequality and racial and ethnic disparities in the labor market and the broader economy. Before this, he worked for UNICEF’s Data & Analytics unit and for UNICEF regional and country offices in Latin America and West Africa. He also served as a research associate for the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is currently a PhD candidate at The New School for Social Research.

Education

M.Phil., Economics, The New School for Social Research

Mast has been interviewed or quoted by numerous outlets including ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and The New Yorker, and appeared on American Public Media for “Marketplace” and the popular “Pitchfork Economics” podcast. 

Before graduate school, Mast worked as a researcher in the labor movement and at issue advocacy organizations focused on health care and the economy. At SEIU Local 32BJ, she conducted research to support fast-food workers in Connecticut and commercial cleaning workers in New York. Prior to 32BJ, she worked on issue campaigns at The Hub Project and efforts to advance a progressive economic worldview at the Groundwork Collaborative.

Education

M.P.P., UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy
B.S., Carnegie Mellon University, International Relations and Politics

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.

Education

Ph.D., Sociology, University of Washington in Seattle
M.S., Human Development and Family Studies, Texas Tech University
M.A., Sociology, Texas Tech University
B.A., Human Development and Family Studies, Texas Tech University.

Jennifer Sherer (she/her) is Deputy Director of EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) and directs EARN’s Worker Power Project, supporting research-organizing partnerships among EARN groups, labor and grassroots organizations to advance racial, gender, and economic justice through state and local policies that expand workers’ ability to unionize and collectively bargain.

Her publications include reports and articles on labor unions, public-sector collective bargaining, “right-to-work” laws, child labor, worker misclassification, wage theft, women’s labor education, labor oral history, and working-class voters, and her work has been cited by numerous local and national media outlets including The Washington Post, The New Yorker, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, and NPR.

Prior to joining EPI in 2021, Sherer served as director of the University of Iowa Labor Center, leading statewide worker outreach, education, and leadership development programming in close partnership with labor unions and community organizations. While at the Labor Center, Sherer also directed the Iowa Labor History Oral Project, helped found the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, co-coordinated the Midwest School for Women Workers, and served on the boards of the Labor and Working Class History Association, Labor Studies Journal, and EARN affiliate Common Good Iowa (formerly the Iowa Policy Project).

Sherer first became active in the labor movement over 25 years ago as a local union officer, a project staff organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), and a leader of student anti-sweatshop campaigns while earning her PhD. She has since served as a local labor council officer, volunteered in dozens of issue campaigns, and walked many picket lines.

Education 

Ph.D., English, University of Iowa
B.A., English and Neuroscience, Oberlin College

Dave Kamper (he/him) is senior state policy strategist for the State Policy and Research team at EPI. He believes that worker power and racial equity are necessary components to a healthy democracy. His work focuses on organizing to build family economic security, the equitable use of federal funds, and supporting collaboration between policy thinkers and grassroots leaders that build collaborative relationships to win needed policy changes at the state and local level.

Prior to joining EPI in 2021, Kamper worked for 20 years in the labor movement in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Minnesota, most recently for the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE).

Kamper’s work has been cited in various publications including The Forge, In These Times, Jacobin, Labor Notes, Labor Studies Journal, Strikewave, St Paul Union Advocate and Workday Magazine. He has also been interviewed by American Prospect,  The Economist, Sacramento Bee, Stateline, Bond Buyer, Tampa Bay Times, The Rick Smith Show, Background Briefing with Ian Masters, KDKA, WAMU, WAMC, New America

Kamper lives in Minnesota with his wife, Joanne, a veterinarian who sometimes operates on lions and tigers.

Education
M.A., Ph.D., History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.S., Labor Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Sebastian Martinez Hickey (he/him) is a State Economic Analyst on the State Policy & Research team at EPI. Martinez Hickey’s research studies state minimum wages, employment levels and pay in the public sector and K-12 education, and state unemployment insurance. He is passionate about centering race and gender in his research and providing historical context for modern day inequalities. His research on state minimum wage increases has been used in numerous debates regarding state and local minimum wage ballot measures. He has made numerous media appearances discussing the minimum wage and public education workers. In addition, he provides technical support to the state-level policy research and advocacy organizations that make up the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). He originally joined EPI in 2021 as a research assistant.

Martinez Hickey has been quoted in Marketplace, CNN, FAIR radio, KFF Health News, and News & Views with Joel Heitkamp, and his work has been cited in the Washington Post, CBS News (Money Watch), NPR, Politico, MarketWatch, the Hill, Business Insider, Mother Jones, and the Associated Press.

Prior to joining EPI, Martinez Hickey worked as a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow where he trained community advocates for affordable housing at the Welcome Home Coalition in Portland, OR and researched access to mental health services for young people with low-incomes at CLASP.

Education
B.A., Public Policy, Stanford University

Stratification economics  • Political economy of health • Labor economics

Biography

Kyle K. Moore (he/him) is an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. He studies economic inequality in the frameworks of stratification economics, political economy, and public health. Prior to joining EPI, Moore was a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee’s Democratic Staff, where he authored reports on economic policy issues centered on race, class, age, and gender disparities for use by Members of Congress and the public.

Moore’s research focuses on the intersection between racial economic disparities and health inequity across the life course, with particular focus on “upstream” structural causes of morbidity and mortality differences across race. In 2019 Moore was a Dissertation Scholar at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Prior to this he worked as a doctoral fellow and research associate with the Retirement Equity Lab at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. 

Education

Ph.D., Economics, The New School for Social Research

M.A., Economics, The New School for Social Research

B.A, Economics, Morehouse College

Working people across the country are ready for transformative economic change. Through partnerships with unions, grassroots partners, and other allies, EPI builds power for working families and advances policy reforms at the local, state, and national levels that center economic justice, racial justice, and gender equity.”

Biography

Naomi Walker (she/her) is executive vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that uses the power of its research on economic trends and on the impact of economic policies to advance reforms that serve working people, deliver racial justice, and guarantee gender equity. As EPI vice president, Walker builds and strengthens partnerships with allied groups to advance policy reforms that support collective bargaining; improve wages, benefits, and working conditions; and reduce racial and gender inequities. She also provides strategic guidance to EPI’s state and local research and policy work.

Walker joined EPI in 2018 as director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), a national network of almost 60 state-level policy research and advocacy organizations.

During her tenure at EARN, she significantly increased the size and scope of the network’s capacity to engage in worker, racial, and gender justice campaigns. Under Walker’s leadership, EARN launched two regional initiatives in the South and Midwest that bring together state and local research and policy organizations with people of color–led grassroots partners to co-lead economic justice initiatives and strengthen the progressive economic justice infrastructure at the state and local levels. In addition, she led the creation of a new Worker Power initiative focused on expanding the ability of working people to achieve justice through organizing, collective bargaining, and enacting state and local policies that ensure all workers have the freedom to join together in a union and gain a voice on the job.  

Before joining EPI, Walker served as assistant to the president at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), where she coordinated AFSCME’s partnerships with allies and coalitions to build power for working families.

Prior to AFSCME, Walker served as director of state government relations and deputy director of the government affairs department for the AFL-CIO. There, she coordinated state issue campaigns on a variety of issues, including fighting so-called “right-to-work” legislation and other attacks on working families, and providing affordable health care for working families. Walker also served as assistant director of the AFL-CIO politics and field department, leading labor’s field campaign for the 2006 election cycle.

Education

B.A., Public Policy Studies, Duke University

Prior to rejoining EPI in 2022, Sanders worked at More Perfect Union, a nonprofit media advocacy organization focused on covering stories about labor, worker power, and the economy primarily through video, social media, and online reporting. Sanders also worked on the team at the Groundwork Collaborative, designing programs and developing policy-informed messaging to advance a strong progressive narrative on the economy.

Sanders originally joined EPI in 2017. She came to EPI after serving as a policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) Wage and Hour Division (WHD). At the WHD, she worked closely with agency leadership on issues including the future of work and employment, overtime pay regulations, communications and public engagement, strategic enforcement of labor standards, and more. Prior to joining DOL, Sanders led digital communications for the Religious Action Center, a faith-based advocacy organization.  

Education
B.A. East Asian Studies, Yale University