Most recently, Western served as the Chief Operating Officer at the Food Research & Action Center, the nation’s leading anti-hunger organization. In this role, Western provided organizational leadership, management, and strategic direction, collaborating with the president to position the organization for growth and success. She led organizational development and change management processes, oversaw all internal and operational components of the organization, and shepherded the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Western previously served as the Director of Operations at OMB Watch (Center for Effective Government). In that capacity, she led overall organization operations, with a focus on finance, board relations, and human resources. Additionally, Western provided strategic advice and coached the senior leadership team. Throughout her career she attained a myriad of other skills including fundraising, marketing, communications, strategic planning, and lobbying. She was an early adopter to weaving equity into work environments, the use of social advocacy tools, and the powerful use of data in decision-making. 

Western holds a BA in Journalism from West Virginia University and a Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate from Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership. She is a mother, musician, animal lover, and environmental advocate.

Most recently she was editor-in-chief and digital director for two national leadership and corporate governance publications based in Philadelphia: Directors & Boards and Private Company Director. In the beginning of 2019, Tahmincioglu spearheaded a year-long ESG editorial project that culminated with a national forum in November under the theme, “The Character of the Corporation: Balancing Profits and Purpose.”

She was also senior director of communications and social media for the New York-based think tank Families & Work Institute focused on early childhood development and workplace research. There she oversaw communications for a national project to bolster more flexible and equitable workplaces titled When Work Works. She also helped promote and contributed to “The Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Pushes Back From The Brink,” a project to help low-income women get employment and emerge from poverty.

She is the author of From the Sandbox to the Corner Office; produced the popular CareerDiva blog; and is a long-time mentor for The OpEd Project.

Tahmincioglu holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Hofstra University. She lives in Philadelphia, with her husband, Andy D’Ambrosio, and her two children, Circe and Cheiron.

In 2010, da Costa co-authored “Cozying Up to Big Investors at Club Fed,” an investigative report that prompted the central bank to adopt a more transparent communications policy, including regular post-meeting press conferences with the Fed chair. Another report co-authored by da Costa, on the failure of some academic economists to disclose financial industry ties, led the American Economic Association to adopt a new code of ethics. Both pieces received awards for journalistic excellence.

Da Costa lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two daughters.

Education
M.A., International Relations, University of California, San Diego
B.A., Sociology, University of Chicago

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

Education
B.S., Political Science, George Washington University

Thea Lee was the president of the Economic Policy Institute from 2017 to 2021. Lee has a longstanding relationship with EPI, having begun her career here as an international trade economist in the 1990s. Lee came to EPI from the AFL-CIO, a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions that represent 12.5 million working men and women, where she served as deputy chief of staff. At the AFL-CIO, she developed a track record of conducting rigorous economic research, overseeing an ambitious policy agenda, and helping steer a large organization through change.

Lee has spent her career advocating on behalf of working families in national policy debates on issues such as wage inequality, workers’ rights, and fair trade. She is co-author of The Field Guide to the Global Economy, published by The New Press, and has authored numerous publications on the North American Free Trade Agreement, the impact of international trade on U.S. wage inequality, and the domestic steel and textile industries.

Lee has been a voice for workers in testimony before congressional committees and in television and radio appearances—including on PBS NewsHour, Good Morning America, NPR’s All Things Considered and Marketplace, Fox Business, and the PBS documentary Commanding Heights. She has also served on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, the Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee, and the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research, among others. She currently serves on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, to which she was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, as well as the boards of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, the Center for International Policy, the Coalition for Human Needs, and the Progressive Talent Pipeline advisory council. She also serves on the national advisory board of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the external advisory board of the Roosevelt Project at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

Lee holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Smith College. Lee lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two dogs. She has one daughter, who teaches middle school in Brooklyn. She likes to cook, read, and travel.

Throughout her career, Wilson has written extensively on various issues impacting racial economic inequality in the United States—including employment, wage, income and wealth disparities—and has also appeared in major print, television, and radio media.  Wilson has testified before Congress on racial disparities in unemployment and earnings and was keynote speaker for the regional Federal Reserve Banks’ series on Racism and the Economy: Focus on Employment.  She has twice served on National Academies panels charged with proposing ways to improve the EEOC’s ability to measure and collect pay information from U.S. employers in support of the agency’s responsibility to investigate charges of pay discrimination. 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.

Education
Ph.D., Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Prior to joining EPI, Rose directed media relations and communications for several nonprofit organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Rose also served as the director of public affairs for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Before her tenure at the FCC, Rose was a public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Labor under Secretary Robert Reich. Rose was also the media relations director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum when it opened in 1993, and served as a press secretary on Capitol Hill for Sen. John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-W.Va.) and Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.).

Education
B.A., Journalism and Political Science, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Since its founding, EPI has highlighted how rising inequality, wage stagnation, and an expanding Black–white wage gap are not ‘natural’ phenomena, but are the result of deliberate policy choices shifting power from workers to the wealthy. Through its research and expertise, EPI has the opportunity to advance real reforms that lead to economic justice, racial justice, and gender equity.”

Biography

Heidi Shierholz (she/her) is the 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. In 2021 she became the fourth president EPI has had since its founding in 1986.

Shierholz, who served the Obama administration as chief economist at the Department of Labor, has been a consistent and leading voice for a worker-centered policy agenda that prioritizes economic and racial justice. Taking the helm at EPI after former President Thea Lee departed to work for the Biden administration, Shierholz is strengthening EPI’s ability to deliver economic analysis that challenges and transforms the mainstream narrative about the economy. Under her leadership, EPI is focused on fighting for and winning federal, state, and local legislative and regulatory reforms that support collective bargaining; increase worker power; improve wages, benefits, and working conditions; and reduce racial and gender inequities.

As EPI policy director from 2017 to 2021, Shierholz led a significant expansion of EPI’s federal policy work, using deeply credible economic research and analysis to build power for working people. Research and insights from EPI on labor and employment policy, wage stagnation, unions, inequality, unemployment benefits, and the policies needed to generate a strong and equitable recovery from the COVID-19 recession routinely shaped policy proposals and informed economic news coverage.

As chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017, Shierholz developed and executed initiatives to boost workers’ rights, wages, and benefits. During her term, the Labor Department became a focal point for ambitious economic policies, such as new regulations guaranteeing overtime pay for millions of workers.

A labor market economist who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, Shierholz was tapped in 2007 by then EPI President Larry Mishel to join EPI as a labor economist, a role she held until joining the Obama administration in 2014. Prior to joining EPI in 2007, Shierholz was assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Throughout her career, Shierholz has educated policymakers, journalists, partner organizations, and the public about the effects of economic policies on low- and middle-income families. A frequent expert witness before congressional committees and public commentator on major media outlets, Shierholz was named one of Washington’s most influential people outside of government by Washingtonian Magazine in 2021. Her work has been cited in many news outlets, including NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, The Today Show, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CSPAN, Fox Business, Bloomberg, NPR, PRI, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.

From C-SPAN to the halls of Congress, Shierholz showcases impactful moments where our voice is heard, making strides for the change we believe in. Media Inquiries: news@epi.org.

A consistent theme throughout Shierholz’s career has been the research showing that unions are a critical force for equality and racial economic justice in this country.

“All workers get a boost from being in unions … but Black workers and Hispanic workers get a bigger boost from being in unions than white workers do,” Shierholz explained to a congressional committee in 2021. “If we take seriously this discussion we are having about racial economic justice, a really important thing we have to do there is boost unionization.”

Areas of expertise
Labor policy • Wage inequality • Unemployment insurance • Long-term unemployment • Labor force participation • Minimum wage • Overtime

Education

Ph.D., Economics, University of Michigan; M.A., Economics, University of Michigan; M.S., Statistics, Iowa State University, B.A., Mathematics, Grinnell College

Biography
Josh Bivens is the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). His areas of research include macroeconomics, inequality, social insurance, public investment, and the economics of globalization.

Bivens has written extensively for both professional and public audiences, with his work appearing in peer-reviewed academic journals (like the Journal of Economic Perspectives) and edited volumes (like The Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises from Oxford University Press), as well as in popular print outlets (like USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times).

Bivens is the author of Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy (EPI and Cornell University Press) and Everybody Wins Except for Most of Us: What Economics Really Teaches About Globalization (EPI), and is a co-author of The State of Working America, 12th Edition (EPI and Cornell University Press).

Bivens has provided expert insight to a range of institutions and media, including formally testifying numerous times before committees of the U.S. Congress.

Before coming to EPI, he was an assistant professor of economics at Roosevelt University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Education
Ph.D., Economics, New School for Social Research
B.A., Economics, University of Maryland at College Park