Campus & Community

KSG dean announces new appointments and promotions

3 min read

Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Dean David T. Ellwood recently announced several new faculty appointments and promotions.

Brigitte Madrian has been named professor of public policy and corporate management in the Aetna Chair. Madrian has been on the faculty at the Wharton School, the University of Chicago, and previously, at Harvard. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. Madrian’s research focuses on employee benefits and social insurance programs, particularly retirement savings plans and health insurance.

Rohini Pande has been named Mohamed Kamal Professor of Public Policy. She has previously taught at Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Columbia University. Pande’s research focuses on the economic analysis of the politics and consequences of different forms of redistribution, principally in developing countries.

Jennifer Lerner will be joining the Kennedy School this summer as professor of public policy and management. Lerner is a social psychologist who specializes in judgment and decision making. Her work focuses on ways in which thought and emotions interact to affect judgment. She is also involved in work seeking to determine the conditions under which increased accountability improves performance.

Matthew Andrews has been named assistant professor of public policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments.

Iris Bohnet has been promoted to professor of public policy and faculty chair of the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program. A behavioral economist, Bohnet’s research combines insights from economics and psychology, focusing on trust, its determinants, and its relevance for negotiation and for individual and collective decision making.

Ronald Heifetz has been promoted to the rank of King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership. Heifetz has been a valuable member of the KSG faculty for more than 20 years and his courses on leadership have been extraordinarily popular among both degree program and executive education students.

Brian Mandell has been promoted to the rank of senior lecturer in public policy. Mandell is director of the School’s Negotiations Project. His current teaching and research address the theory and practice of negotiation, emphasizing third-party facilitation and consensus-building in domestic and international protracted policy disputes.

Julie Wilson has been reappointed as a senior lecturer. Wilson serves as director of the School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. She has served as a leader in programs the Kennedy School has offered to members of Congress and others on health care policy. In addition, she has a significant research record on the historical interaction of race and geography in various cities, on children at risk in foster care, and in other areas.

Suzanne Cooper has been promoted to the rank of senior lecturer. Cooper is faculty chair of the master in public policy degree program. She studies the dynamics of the macroeconomy. Most recently she has worked on the effects of redistributional policies and educational finance reforms on intergenerational income inequality.