Deepak Premkumar is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he specializes in the intersection of race, criminal justice, and health. Through the lens and tools of an economist, his recent work examines the broader effects of police use-of-force and social costs of policing. He aims to provide an empirical guide to understand the determinants of disparities in the legal and health systems, while investigating policies to alleviate them. He has published a book chapter, co-written with Justin McCrary, in The Cambridge Handbook of Policing in the United States....
Daniel Payares-Montoya is a research associate at the PPIC Higher Education Center. His research focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on California’s community colleges, English as a second language, and the relation between labor markets and higher education in California. Before joining PPIC, he worked as a consultant for the World Bank, concentrating on green growth and green finance in developing countries, and as a researcher at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California Berkeley, focusing on the socio-economic and political impact of globalization and...
Julien Lafortune is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he specializes in K–12 education. His primary areas of focus include education finance, school capital funding policy, and educational tracking and stratification. He has published research on the impacts of school finance reforms on student achievement in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Caitlin Peterson is associate director and research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. She is an agroecologist whose research spans climate-smart agriculture, soil health, diversified cropping systems, agroecosystem resilience, and multi-benefit agricultural landscapes. In her previous work, she explored irrigation and soil ecosystem functions in California almond and tomato systems, crop-livestock integration in Brazilian soybean-beef systems, and small farmer adaptation to climate change in Colombia, Tanzania, and Ghana. As a consulting agroecologist, she led programs linking...
Paulette Cha is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Her research focuses on the health of underserved populations, especially children and immigrants, and her recent projects address the effects of public insurance expansions for these groups. She has also evaluated programs for low-income individuals at MDRC and Innovations for Poverty Action. She completed a joint postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA and the University of Southern California, and she holds a PhD in health policy/health economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Kathleen Morris is the founder of California Public Counsel, a private law firm specializing in representing public entities. She taught for over a decade at Golden Gate University Law School, where she was a tenured professor, and has also taught at Yale, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Davis, and Rutgers law schools. In 2006, she co-founded (with Dean Heather Gerken) Yale Law School’s “San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project,” which flourishes today.
Professor Morris is a proud graduate of U.C. Berkeley Law School (J.D....
Kellie Hogue is a Research Associate of the Institute of Governmental Studies, mentoring Jo Freeman Women in Politics Cal-in-Sac Fellows conducting research on public policies that affect women, and a Senior Researcher at California Research Bureau, where she effectively combines qualitative and quantitative approaches with data science tools and methods to provide optimal research and information-based solutions for a legislative and gubernatorial clientele.
Her current research projects, in partnership with the California Commission on the Status of Women and...
Tonya D. Lindsey is a senior researcher at the California Research Bureau where she uses her expertise in research methods to analyze a wide variety of policy questions at the request of legislators, the governor’s office, and their staff. Her publications include analyses of inequity, open government principles, race in California prisons for men, and mass media ownership among other policy-related topics. She is a lecturer in the sociology department at California State University, Chico where she teaches social statistics, research methods, and public sociology. Her...
Sarah Bohn is vice president and John and Louise Bryson chair in policy research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. She is also a member of the PPIC Higher Education Center. As vice president and chair in policy research, she works with PPIC staff to bring high-quality, nonpartisan research to important policy issues in California. Her own research focuses on the role of social safety net policy and education policy in alleviating poverty and enhancing economic mobility. Her other areas of expertise include immigration policy, the workforce skills gap, and...
Patricia Malagon is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, where she focuses on social safety net programs. Before joining PPIC, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, where she analyzed racial disparities in program access and employment outcomes for CalWORKs participants. She holds a BA in political economy from the University of California, Berkeley.
