Part 2 of SPIA in NJ's Fall 2024 series, New Jersey and the American Economy: What’s Needed for the Garden State to Lead a Thriving Country:
As states across the country face unique and intensifying challenges, leaders and experts across sectors are imagining new and bold solutions that seek to address threats in an intersectional fashion. This conversation will highlight some of these new ideas including a guaranteed basic income and child care for all, and discuss how they can be implemented here in New Jersey to boost our economy and help all in our communities lead healthy, thriving lives.
Co-sponsored by: Princeton Public Lectures, The Program for Research on Inequality & the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance (JRCPPF)
Natalie Foster, President & Founder - Economic Security Project
Natalie Foster is a leading architect of the movement to build an inclusive and resilient economy. She’s President and co-founder of Economic Security Project, a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative, and the author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight For America’s Next Economy.” Natalie speaks and writes regularly on economic security, the future of work, and the new political economy. An unstoppable builder, Natalie previously co-founded Rebuild the Dream, served as Digital Director for President Obama's Organizing for America - a leading partner in winning transformative healthcare reform and built digital teams at the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org. A daughter of a preacher from Kansas, Natalie draws on the values of community, dignity, and optimism to build a better America. She's on the board of Next River founded by Mia Birdsong and the California Budget and Policy Center, and lives in Oakland, California with her husband and two kids.
Ilyana Kuziemko, Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics - The Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies
Ilyana Kuziemko is the Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics, co-director of the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, and co-director of the Princeton Program in Public Finance at Princeton University. Kuziemko re-joined the Princeton faculty in 2014, after teaching at Columbia Business School from 2012-14, where she was the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business. From 2009-10, Kuziemko served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she worked primarily on the development and early implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Her research interests are in the areas of public finance, political economy and labor economics, with focuses on U.S. economic inequality and in particular its interaction with political and labor-market institutions. She also is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Kuziemko received her A.B. in economics from Harvard University, a second B.A. in mathematics from Oxford University (where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar), and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. She lives in Princeton with her husband and two children.
Nedia Morsy, Deputy Director - Make the Road New Jersey
Nedia Morsy is the Deputy Director at Make the Road New Jersey, a powerful grassroots movement of immigrant and working-class people. Make the Road operates three organizing hubs in Elizabeth, Passaic and Perth Amboy that provide legal support and services, adult education, and youth development programming. Over the past ten years, Make the Road has won 20 campaigns that transform the lives of our members and policy victories that have helped lift more than 1 million immigrant and working class New Jerseyans out of poverty, including the first guaranteed severance, the strongest temp workers bill of rights in the country, financial aid for Dreamers, and occupational licenses for all.
Among other priorities, over the next year as a SPIA in NJ Policy Fellow, Morsy plans to study right-of-center organizing strategies, instruct students in power mapping, and coordinate popular education workshops.
Morsy graduated from Amherst College and served as a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs in St. Louis.
Moderator: Brandon McKoy, President - The Fund for New Jersey
Brandon McKoy is an established leader in state policy analysis and advocacy in New Jersey and nationwide. He completed his bachelor’s degree at The College of New Jersey and earned a master’s degree from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Brandon worked as a Program Associate at The Fund for New Jersey and served as its first philanthropy fellow from 2012-2014. He then went on to spend more than seven years at New Jersey Policy Perspective in several roles, first as a State Policy Fellow through the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ program, then as a Policy Analyst, and then as Director of Government and Public Affairs, before assuming leadership of the organization as NJPP’s President for nearly 3 years. In 2024, Brandon rejoined The Fund for New Jersey as President, after more than two years at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC, where he was Vice President for state partnerships and co-leader of the State Fiscal Policy Division. He is a lifelong New Jerseyan who was born in Secaucus, raised in South Orange, and now resides in Hunterdon County with his family.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.