Network Experts

The National Council for Research on Women’s highly informed, articulate experts can address some of today’s most complex issues and make them accessible to a wide range of audiences. From sustainable development to pay equity, and from women’s human rights to health care, the more than 2,000 researchers and specialists in our network are sources of information, analysis and inspiration.

If you have a conference, a panel or a news story in preparation and need some expertise, search our database of leaders and change-makers using the filter below or contact us directly at ncrw@ncrw.org.

Penny Abeywardena
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New York , New York

Penny leads the Clinton Global Initiative’s Girls and Women program and is Associate Director, Commitments. She is responsible for the portfolio of CGI Commitments focused on girls and women worldwide as well as spearheading year round efforts in this space. Prior to CGI, Penny worked in both development and programmatic areas for Human Rights Watch, the Funding Exchange and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. She graduated from the University of Southern California and completed her Master of International Affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Penny is currently an organizer of TEDxHarlem 2012, serves on the Board of Directors of Harlem Success Academy Five, the Advisory Board of Blue Engine, and a member of the Global Fund for Muslim Women’s Global Advisory Council.

Mimi Abramovitz
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New York , New York

Mimi Abramovitz is the CHAIR of Social Welfare Policy at Hunter College School of Social Work, and serves as the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Work and Social Policy. Professor Abramovitz academic interests include poverty in the United States, race and social welfare policy, low income women's activism, class race and gender, the impact of neoliberalism on the welfare state, and the history of the US welfare state. Books she has recently published include Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the United States, NY: Monthly Review Press, (2nd rev Ed), 2009 and The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy, NY: Oxford University Press (w/ Joel Blau) (2nd rev ed), 2007.  Scholarly articles that Professor Abramovitz has recently published are “Wall St Takes Welfare It Begrudges Women.

Eileen Appelbaum
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Washington , District Of Columbia

Eileen Appelbaum joined the Center for Economic Policy and Research in 2010 after eight years at Rutgers University as Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work. Previously she held positions as Research Director at the Economic Policy Institute and as Professor of Economics at Temple University. Her research focuses on work processes and work-life practices of organizations and their implications for organizational effectiveness and for the quality of jobs. Publications include the co-edited volume, Low Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace (2003) and the coauthored books, Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off (2000) and The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the US (1994), all three of which were selected by Princeton University as Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics.

Radhika Balakrishnan
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New York , New York

Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and Professor, Women's and Gender Studies, has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Previously, she was Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She has worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network and on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She is the author of Why MES with Human Rights: Integrating Macro Economic Strategies with Human Rights (Marymount Manhattan College, New York, 2005). She edited The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy (Kumarian Press, 2001) and co-edited Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions, with Patricia Jung and Mary Hunt (Rutgers University Press, 2000).

Sienna Baskin
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New York , New York

Sienna Baskin, Esq. is co-director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. Ms. Baskin provides non-judgmental legal education, advice and representation to sex workers on a variety of issues, including housing, criminal, employment, and immigration matters. She also assists victims of trafficking with immigration applications, family reunification, and cooperation with law enforcement. Ms. Baskin leads "Know Your Rights" workshops for sex workers in a courts and community settings and advocates for policy change on the state and federal level, educating legislatures and decision-makers about the effects of laws on sex workers. Ms. Baskin’s writings have been published on Huffington Post, the Economist, Alternet, RHReality Check, the City of New York Law Review, Research For Sex Work (forthcoming), and Wagadu; a Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies (forthcoming). Prior to joining the Sex Workers Project, Ms.

Nancy Biberman
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Bronx , New York

Nancy Biberman founded WHEDco in 1991 with the vision of restoring the South Bronx to the beautiful, bustling place it once was. WHEDco’s first project was the renovation of the abandoned Morrisania Hospital to provide low-income families with affordable homes and economic opportunities. In partnership with neighborhood leaders, Nancy developed the Urban Horizons Economic Development Center, which houses family support services, a Head Start center, a commercial kitchen that incubates small food businesses, and a primary healthcare center. With local parents, Nancy catalyzed the construction of the adjacent public school, PS/MS 218. Recently, Nancy led WHEDco in developing Intervale Green, the largest multi-family, high-rise, Energy Star certified affordable housing development in the nation.

Sharon L. Camp
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New York , New York

Sharon L. Camp is President and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, the leading policy research organization in the field of sexual and reproductive health. Prior to joining Guttmacher, Dr. Camp was President and CEO of Women’s Capital Corporation, a start-up company responsible for the development and commercialization of Plan B emergency contraception. For many years the leading spokesperson in Washington, DC for international family planning programs, she was also largely responsible for bringing together the highly successful International Consortium for Emergency Contraception and served until April 1998 as its Coordinator. From 1975 to 1993, Dr. Camp was Senior Vice President of Population Action International, managing PAI’s professional staff involved in lobbying, media liaison, policy research and publications.

Mary Ellen Capek

Mary Ellen Capek is principal of Capek & Associates. She is co-author of Effective Philanthropy: Organizational Success through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality (MIT Press, 2006 www.effectivephilanthropybook.org), which won the 2007 Independent Sector/ARNOVA Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Prize for the best book on philanthropy in the nonprofit sector that informs policy and practice. Mary Ellen is also lead author of The Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector Scan (2006), written for the Rutgers University Institute for Ethical Leadership.

Natalia Cardona
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New Brunswick , New Jersey

Natalia Cardona, is the Constituency Engagement Manager at the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). Cardona has worked on issues of militarism and economic justice for more than a decade. She began her career at UNIFEM’s Andean Regional Office in Ecuador. Cardona also spent nine years at American Friends Service Committee lobbying to change U.S. military and economic policy in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Cardona has worked as advocacy coordinator for Social Watch in New York focusing on financing for development, gender equality, and climate justice at the United Nations. Most recently, she worked as Program Director for the Center for Women's Global Leadership leading their work on militarism and violence against women as well as social and economic rights. She holds a M.Sc. in International Affairs with a specialization on Poverty and Development from the New School and a B.A.

Mariko Chang
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Boston , Massachusetts

Dr. Mariko Chang is the author of the new book, Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It, and the main author of the March 2010 report “Lifting as We Climb Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future.” Dr. Chang has a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University and was an Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University from 1998 to 2007 where she published work on occupational sex segregation across countries, the use of social networks for gathering financial information and began her work on the gender wealth gap. To help raise awareness of the wealth gap, she maintains a website that provides data and other information on wealth, assets, and debt for public policy makers, the media, researchers, and organizations that address economic security.