Dena R. Al-Khatib

Dena Al-Khatib is the Career Connect Administrator for the Chicago Cook Workforce.  Dena brings over 15 years of community development and project management experience to the organization.  She oversaw a $3 million Department of Labor Workforce Innovation Fund grant to develop and implement Career Connect a new integrated data system that is empowering workforce service providers to make data-informed decisions to improve services to job seekers and employers. Dena administers both the technical and programmatic aspects of Career Connect. She also oversaw the Calumet Green Manufacturing Partnership (CGMP), a collaboration of community colleges, economic development agencies, and community-based organizations that trained and placed almost 100 participants in manufacturing jobs.

Prior to joining The Partnership, Dena served as the Program Officer for The Partnership for New Communities Fund at the Chicago Community Trust. There she administered a portfolio of workforce, economic development, and research grants.  One successful workforce program was Opportunity Chicago, a $27.5 million public-private initiative that placed over 6,000 Chicago public housing residents in employment over 5 years.

At the City of Chicago she led the start-up of the Chicago Community Land Trust (CCLT), a nonprofit created to preserve affordable home ownership opportunities.  In her three and half years with the CCLT, Dena brought over 40 housing units into the portfolio in the midst of the foreclosure crisis.  

Dena holds a Master's of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Bachelor's degree in Writing-Intensive English and Psychology from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Steve Barham

Steve Barham is building a data science team at the Seattle Department of Transportation, where he works with a broad range of programmatic and operational topics that include parking, congestion, bike share, car share, ride share, transit, streetcar, project delivery, social media, and equity. He combines temporal and geospatial analysis, intermediate machine learning, and visual communication to support operations and decision-making at the City and trains staff on data visualization, data wrangling, and business intelligence.  

Steve hopes to collaborate with technology innovators and the civic technology community and has led Data Science for Social Good summer projects (2017 and 2018). Steve has graduate degrees from the UW Evans School of Public Policy and Governance and the UW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and has helped thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs become more effective with his iOS apps and data tools.

Lauren Bowers

Lauren Bowers has been a survey statistician in the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau for the past 6 years. Her work focuses on using small area estimation methods to improve the accuracy of survey estimates for small populations. The models that she works with utilize several sources of administrative records including IRS tax returns and Medicaid participation records. Lauren received a master's degree in applied demography and a bachelor's degree in economics and international affairs from Florida State University. 

René Casiano

René Casiano is the Director of Applications for the City of South Bend, IN's Innovation and Technology (IT) department. His main responsibility is to help the City of South Bend implement technological solutions to City problems by leading a team of GIS specialists and developers. This role consists of vetting and acquiring new software solutions, architecting interfaces and integrations, and providing increased software functionality to existing systems through updates and upgrades. René gets to work with every City department and improve all City processes. His main technical specialties include SQL, database administration, Python, JavaScript, SSIS, and ArcGIS. René has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and a M.S. in Engineering, Science, and Technology both from the University of Notre Dame.

Jason Crowley

Jason Crowley is a Labor Market Research Economist in the Labor Market Information Division at Iowa Workforce Development. His primary areas of focus are education program outcomes research and the stateís labor market information website, iowalmi.gov. Jason holds an M.S. degree in statistics from Iowa State University, as well as B.S. degrees in economics and statistics from Iowa State University.

Margo Dawes

Margo Dawes is the New Mobility, Data, and Equity Strategic Advisor at the Seattle Department of Transportation. She develops performance metrics, evaluation frameworks, and equity strategies for pilots testing emerging mobility technologies like electric vehicle charging and free-floating bike share. She has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Planning as well as a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ethan Dove

Ethan Dove is a Business Analyst for the City of South Bend, IN's Innovation and Technology department. He consults divisions within the Public Works departments to help implement technological solutions and improve business processes. His focus is to help the Public Works department make data driven decisions. Over the past year with the City, Ethan has been learning ArcGIS, SQL, and Python. Ethan has a B.A. in Religion from Wabash College and a M.S. in Engineering, Science, and Technology from the University of Notre Dame. 

Jennifer Jennings

Jennifer Jennings is the Data Management Project Director for the Illinois Department of Human Services Division of Substance Use Prevention and Recovery. Her current focus is on assisting in developing policy to reduce opioid deaths in Illinois. Previously she worked in a collaboration between the Erikson Institute and Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for their statewide launch of the Integrated Assessment program. She holds a BA in Political Science and an MSW with a clinical concentration, both from Loyola University Chicago. In addition to her intellectual pursuits, she is an expert in Seinfeld trivia. She will also dazzle you with her theories of the end of Game of Thrones.

Jeff Lauritsen

My name is Jeff Lauritsen and I am an epidemiologist 2 in the HIV data and research team for the City of Chicago Department of Public Health.  I have over 6 year of experience as an epidemiologist and I enjoy the work I do.  I have obtained my MPH in International Public Health from Tulane.  My job consists of analyzing data for data request, or to handle program data needs.  I have also been able to analyze disease data to answer research questions.  The main tool I use in my work is SAS, so I am excited to work in Python and SQL to gain some understanding of data analysis using other languages. 

Sam Mabini

Dr. Shirley “Sam” Mabini was born and raised in Guam, and currently serves as the Director for the Guam Department of Labor. She oversees the compliance divisions, as well as the workforce development and training divisions of the department. She has a M.Ed. in Work, Community and Family Education, and a Ph.D. in Work and Human Resource Education from the University of Minnesota.  She is currently the Regional Coordinator for Western States for the National Association of Government Labor Officials, and the Vice Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee for the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.

Prior to her role at the Guam Department of Labor, Dr. Mabini was the Provost, V.P. of Academics & Advancement at the Pacific Islands University.   She was also an adjunct Assistant Professor for the University of Maryland University College teaching Diversity Awareness, research and college success.  Dr. Mabini was a Senator in the 31st Guam Legislature, serving from January 2010 to December 2012. As a Senator, she worked diligently on numerous initiatives, focusing on the areas of education and workforce development, to improve and enhance the livelihood of Guam citizens.  In Minnesota, Dr. Mabini was appointed by Governor Jesse Ventura to be the first Pacific Islander to serve in the State Council on Asian and Pacific Minnesotans (2001-2003).

Matthew Morley

Matt Morley is the Quality Assurance & Audit Manager for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.  He received his BS in Psychology from Tennessee Tech University in 1997 and then secured a job with the City of Nashville.  He has been working with the police department for 15 years, and spent two more years working with the Metro Criminal Justice Planning department primarily analyzing jail and court data.  He has been working with the University of Chicago since 2016 to build and deploy the first data-driven machine learning Early Intervention System (EIS) for police officers.  His primary duties are data analysis for QA standards and current projects/partnerships, managing the department's EIS program and performing audits for policy development. 

Cristian E. Nuno

My name is Cristian E. Nuno and I am a project associate at the Poverty Lab within the UChicago Urban Labs. For over a year, I have translated research questions from principal investigators, research managers, and clients into a technical design to develop project requirements and extract, transform, and load (ETL) specifications.

When I am not working on research, I am teaching R to colleagues, googling answers to questions on Stack Overflow, and taking data science courses on DataCamp.

Personally, I am engaged to my high school sweetheart and her I enjoy watching Sopranos with our two rescue dogs.

Dharana Rijal

Dharana Rijal is a Consultant with the Big Data Program at the World Bank. Her work focuses on advancing data science capabilities and relevant partnerships in the development community. Prior to this, Dharana provided analysis and strategic advice to various human and economic development projects with non-profits and UN agencies in South and Southeast Asia. Dharana has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Smith College and a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University.

Mrijan Rimal

Mrijan Rimal is a Data Scientist for Development Economics - Impact Evaluation Group at the World Bank. Mrijan has a Bachelor in Economics from Reed College, and a Master in Public Policy from National University of Singapore. 

Martin Sellers

Martin Sellers is a Senior Budget Analyst with the City of Chicago’s Office of Budget and Management’s Data Analytics Team.  His focus in on analyzing financial and workforce management data from multiple sources to provide budgetary, technical and managerial recommendations to various City Departments and the Mayor’s office.  Martin has a BA from the University of Nebraska (Go Big Red!) in Economics and History.  In 2015, Martin completed his Master of Public Administration from DePaul University with a concentration in Metropolitan Planning and Urban Affairs.

Matt Soria

Matt Soria is a Senior Public Service Administrator for the State of Illinois.  He has worked with the state since 2012.  Matt has a BS in Finance from UIC, and is currently working on his MS in Computer Science at DePaul University.

Rachel VerBoort

Rachel VerBoort is the Program Manager for Seattle Transportation Benefit District with the Seattle Department of Transportation.  In this role, Rachel designs and implements transit service purchase program within Seattle Department of Transportation; allocates 300,000 annual service hours, leads quantitative service data analysis, and coordinates with King County Metro on investment implementation. She manages the $50M annual budget, working with regional partners to implement and fund program components; supervises multidisciplinary team consisting of service planners and low-income access staff; and oversees 6-year contract with King County Metro Transit.

Previously, Ms. VerBoort worked at King County Metro in the Strategy & Performance group, focused on project management, performance measurement and management, and technical data analysis. She has extensive experience in in public policy, stakeholder relations and coordination, and performance reporting.  Ms. VerBoort's prior experience with AECOM included overseeing budget, scope, schedule, client relations, and meeting logistics for various transportation projects in the Southern California area. Ms. VerBoort has a Master's degree in Transportation Planning from the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.

Garret Wais

Garret Wais is a Geographic Information Systems Manager at the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. He received a BS in Geography, Minor in urban studies, with a certificate in Geographic Information Systems at Northern Illinois University and a Graduate Certificate in Remote Sensing at Northeastern University, MA.

James Ziemba

Jim Ziemba is a GIS Specialist for the Forest Preserves of Cook County.  He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia with a bachelor’s of science in forest resource management.