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Speakers include (in alphabetical order):

Speakers include (in alphabetical order):

G. Lawrence Atkins became President of NASI in July 2012. He is currently a health policy consultant. Previously, he was Executive Director of U.S. Public Policy for Merck, where he directed the pharmaceutical company’s public policy and legislative strategy development, covering federal, state and local public policy issues. Prior to joining Merck, he held a similar position at Schering-Plough Corporation. Previously, Atkins was President of Health Policy Analysts, a health policy consulting firm specializing in health benefits, insurance markets and pharmaceutical policy. He has also worked for The Jefferson Group and the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam and Roberts. During the 1980s, Atkins served as Republican Staff Director and professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. He was also staff to Senator Heinz as Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Private Retirement Plans. In 1982, he was Senator Heinz’s Technical Advisor on the National Commission on Social Security Reform. Atkins was a member of the 1991 Advisory Council on Social Security, the Technical Advisory Panel on retirement savings for the 1995 Advisory Council on Social Security, and NASI’s 2010 Study Panel on Health Insurance Exchanges. A founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, he received his Ph.D. in social welfare policy from Brandeis University.

Joe Baker has been President of the Medicare Rights Center since June 2009. Baker is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Health Care Services and Committee on Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending and Promotion of High-Value Care. He also serves on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Advisory Panel on Outreach and Education. He is an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, where he teaches a class on implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Previously, he was the deputy secretary for health and human services in New York State under Governor David A. Paterson, where he was instrumental in developing Medicaid reforms and a proposal to extend health coverage to younger New Yorkers. Baker served as assistant deputy secretary for health and human services under Governor Eliot Spitzer, after having directed the Health Care Bureau under Spitzer when he was attorney general of New York. Baker was executive vice president of Medicare Rights from 1994 to 2001, and prior to that was associate director of legal services for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law.

Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI he was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), where he oversaw SSA’s policy research efforts and led the agency’s participation in the Social Security Trustees working group. In 2005 he worked on Social Security reform at the National Economic Council and in 2001 was on the staff of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Biggs’ work at AEI focuses on Social Security reform, state and local government pensions, and comparisons of public and private sector compensation. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2004, he holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Masters degrees from Cambridge University and the University of London.

Duncan Black is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and writes the influential blog Eschaton under the pseudonym of Atrios. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University. He has taught economics at Bryn Mawr College and the University of California, Irvine.

David Blumenthal, M.D., is president of The Commonwealth Fund, a national philanthropy engaged in independent research on health and social policy issues. He is also chairman of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System. Previously, he was the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Health Information and Innovation Officer at Partners Healthcare System in Boston. He served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and of the National Academy of Sciences, a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, and serves on several editorial boards, including the American Journal of Medicine and Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. He is also a National Correspondent for The New England Journal of Medicine. He serves on advisory committees to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Open Society Institute and other foundations. A founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Blumenthal chaired the Academy’s study panel on Medicare and Chronic Care and, with June Eichner, edited its report, Medicare in the 21st Century: Building a Better Chronic Care System. He received his medical degree from Harvard University.

Vanessa Cárdenas is the Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress which seeks to build a progressive agenda that is more inclusive of the rich racial and ethnic makeup of our nation. Prior to this position, she served as the Center’s Director for Ethnic Media. Previously, Cárdenas worked as a policy/communications associate and outreach coordinator at the National Immigration Forum, where she helped bridge the policy, communications, and grassroots advocacy world to disseminate the Forum’s message and work, including through numerous organizing and legislative campaigns. Prior to that, she managed and administered public education and outreach programs serving diverse communities on a range of issues for the Arlington Public Schools and the Arlington County Fire Department. Cárdenas holds a B.A. in government and politics and a master’s in public administration, both from George Mason University. She is a 2010 fellow of the National Hispana Leadership Institute and an alum of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia and Leadership Arlington. She was profiled as one of the “100 People to Watch in the Next Century” by Washingtonian magazine.

Ngina Chiteji is an Associate Professor of Economics at Skidmore College. Her research examines financial systems, intergenerational connections, household wealth, and asset-ownership patterns. Previously, she was a Research Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, a visiting scholar at the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, and a fellow at the Poverty Research and Training Program at the University of Michigan. Her research has appeared in scholarly journals such as Labour Economics, the Journal of Family and Economic Issues, the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Social Science Computer Review, the Review of Black Political Economy, and the Journal of International Development. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2011, Chiteji received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina.

Brian Collins is a Policy Analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Project. Prior to joining BPC in September 2012, Collins worked at eHealth Initiative, an association that advocates for policies to advance the adoption of health information technology. Collins earned a Master of Public Policy degree and a B.S. in business administration, with concentrations in accounting and finance, from Oregon State University, where he conducted research on health care reform efforts at the state level. He has worked on political campaigns, including the 2010 re-election of U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, staffed an Oregon gubernatorial commission on postsecondary education quality, and has worked as an accountant in the private sector.

Dan Crippen serves as Executive Director of the National Governors Association, where he works with governors to identify and prioritize the most pressing issues facing states and oversees the day-to-day operations of the association. Crippen brings a wealth of experience in state and federal budgets, health care and retirement issues. Prior to his work at NGA, he served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1999 to 2002, supporting the Congressional budget process and providing expert analysis to guide and inform economic decision making. Since then, he has worked in the private and nonprofit sectors primarily on health care, including Medicaid, health IT, and health care for elderly and complex patients. In the 1980s, Crippen served as the Chief Counsel and Economic Advisor for Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and as the Assistant and Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy under the Reagan administration. Crippen is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Center for Health Care Strategies, a member of the board of Father Martin’s Ashley, and a member of the CBO Economic Advisors. He has also served as senior advisor to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as a member of the CEO Health Transformation Community, the NASA Aeronautics and Safety Advisory Panel and the Google Health Advisory Committee. Crippen holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in public finance from The Ohio State University.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, and university professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University. Dionne began his career with The New York Times, where he spent fourteen years reporting on state and local government, national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. He joined The Washington Post in 1990 as a reporter covering national politics and began writing his column in 1993. Dionne is the author of numerous books, including the best-seller Why Americans Hate Politics (1991), which won the Los Angeles Times book prize and was a National Book Award nominee. His latest book is Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent (2012). Dionne has received numerous awards, including the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award to honor a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics. He has been named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal and among the capital city’s top 50 journalists by Washingtonian magazine. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dionne graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Harvard University in 1973 and received his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Hilary A. Doe is a Senior Advisor at the Roosevelt Institute. She previously served as the Institute’s Vice President of Programming and Operations and as the National Director of the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, the nation’s largest student policy organization. She is also the founder of Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline, a leading political network for young leaders in their 20s and 30s. She has been featured on NPR, Fox News, and Huffington Post, and was named as a “Top 30 under 30 Civic Leader” in 2011. Prior to joining Roosevelt, Doe worked as a senior analyst at Anderson Economic Group, and held positions with the Brookings Institute and the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. She is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2011. Doe holds a master’s degree in public policy and a bachelor’s degree in political science, both from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in politics at Princeton University.

Daniel T. Durham is the Executive Vice President for Policy and Regulatory Affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans, where he leads health care reform implementation efforts and policy activities. Previously, Durham served as a Vice President for Policy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. He also served in high-level policy positions in the federal government at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget. Durham has also held key policy positions at AARP and the California Legislative Analyst’s Office. He received his undergraduate degree in government and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and a Master’s degree in public policy from Duke University.

Melissa M. Favreault is Senior Fellow in the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. She co-edited Social Security and the Family: Addressing Unmet Needs in an Underfunded System (Urban Institute Press 2002), and has written extensively about the distributional effects of proposed changes to Social Security. Her work in this area has focused on how changes in family structure and work/earnings patterns affect economic well-being in retirement, with a special emphasis on effects for women, low-wage workers, and persons with disabilities. For this work, she has often relied on dynamic microsimulation models, and she was helped to develop these types of models for both the Urban Institute and the Social Security Administration. Favreault served on the Social Security Advisory Board’s 2011 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and Russian from Amherst College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University.

Karen Friedman is Executive Vice President and Policy Director at the Pension Rights Center. As a leading authority on retirement security, she develops solutions and implements strategies to protect and promote the rights of consumers. She is the coordinator of Retirement USA, an initiative that is working to promote the need for a new universal, secure and adequate pension system that supplements Social Security for future workers. Friedman also founded and directed the Conversation on Coverage, a successful national policy dialogue that developed innovative common ground proposals to expand pensions and savings for American workers. She has published numerous op-eds in such newspapers as The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer; is quoted regularly in national news outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times; and has appeared on numerous shows including ABC World News Tonight, CNN, and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. A graduate of Georgetown University and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Friedman has more than 25 years of policy, communications, and advocacy experience.

Marc Goldwein is the Senior Policy Director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, where he guides and conducts research on a wide array of topics related to fiscal policy and the federal budget. In 2010, Goldwein spent nine months as Associate Director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (The Fiscal Commission), and in 2011 he spent three months as a senior budget analyst on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (The Super Committee).  He has also conducted research for the Government Accountability Office, the World Bank, the Historian’s Office at the Social Security Administration, and the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. In addition to his work at CRFB, Goldwein teaches economics at Johns Hopkins University, where he received his B.A. in political science and M.A. in economics. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2009, he was featured in the 2011 Forbes “30 Under 30” list for Law & Policy.

Stephen C. Goss is Chief Actuary at the Social Security Administration (SSA). He has been with SSA since 1973. Goss has been a staff participant representing the Office of the Actuary at the President’s Commission on Pension Policy, the 1979, 1991, and 1995 Advisory Councils, the National Commission on Social Security, and the National Commission on Social Security Reform. He has presented papers at the Society of Actuaries, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, National Conference on Private Long-Term Care Insurance, the American Academy of Actuaries, the Pension Research Council, the Gerontological Society of America and the Atlantic Economic Society. He is a member of the Society of Actuaries and the American Academy of Actuaries. He also served on the NASI study panel on “Evaluating Issues in Privatizing Social Security” and on its “Uncharted Waters” Study Panel. He received the 2004 Robert M. Ball Award for outstanding achievements in social insurance. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1990, Goss received his M.S. in mathematics from the University of Virginia.

Anna Greenberg, Senior Vice President at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, is a leading pollster and an expert in survey research methodology with nearly 15 years of experience. Since joining Greenberg Quinlan Rosner in 2001, Greenberg has worked with many elected officials and a wide range of NGOs and advocacy groups. Her areas of expertise include women and politics, LGBT rights, religion and politics, healthcare policy and drug policy reform. Greenberg also leads GQRDigital, a practice that explores the impact of social media on public opinion and provides micro-targeting for candidates and advocacy organizations. Previously, Greenberg taught at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was a visiting scholar with the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. She serves on the advisory board of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College and is a research fellow at American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a BA in Government from Cornell University.

G. William Hoagland became a Senior Vice President at the Bipartisan Policy Center in September 2012. He has completed 33 years of federal government service, 25 spent as staff in the U.S. Senate. From 2007 to 2012 he served at CIGNA Corporation, most recently as vice president of public policy, where he focused on health care reform issues at both the federal and state levels. Prior to joining CIGNA, Hoagland served as the director of budget and appropriations in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), and as staff director of the Senate Budget Committee for more than 15 years. In 1981 he served as the administrator of the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and as a special assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture. He was one of the first employees of the then-newly-created Congressional Budget Office in 1975. In 2002, he received the James L. Blum Award for Distinguished Service in Budgeting. A member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Hoagland holds degrees from Purdue University and The Pennsylvania State University.

Jane Horvath, Executive Director of Health Policy and Reimbursement at Merck & Co., is responsible for US federal public policy issues such as Medicare Part D, Medicaid, uninsured and low income access, health information technology and health reform implementation. Before coming to Merck in 2004, she was a Deputy Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Partnership for Solutions, conducting research and working on policy issues related to care management and service financing for people with multiple chronic conditions. Horvath served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Clinton and Secretary Shalala, and has also worked for many years on Medicaid policy. She was Director of the Health Policy Unit at the American Public Welfare Association (now the Association of State Human Service Administrators), representing State Medicaid officials. She worked closely with State Medicaid and Public Health programs when she was Director of Medicaid Projects for the National Academy for State Health Policy. Horvath has also served as Professional Staff to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid during the Clinton health reform years. She has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters of Health Services Administration from the George Washington University.

Richard Jackson is a senior fellow and director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a senior adviser to the Concord Coalition. Jackson is the author of numerous policy studies, including Balancing Tradition and Modernity: The Future of Retirement in East Asia (2012); Global Aging and the Future of Emerging Markets (2011); The Global Aging Preparedness Index (2010); and The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century (2008). He has previously worked as an independent researcher, writer, and consultant on public policy issues, and as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute. Jackson regularly speaks on long-term demographic and economic issues. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and a B.A. in classics from SUNY at Albany.

David C. John is a Senior Research Fellow in Retirement Security and Financial Institutions at The Heritage Foundation, where he is the Foundation’s lead analyst on issues relating to pensions, financial markets and institutions, banking regulation, asset building, and Social Security reform. Since coming to Heritage in 1998, he has written and lectured extensively on the importance of reforming the nation’s retirement system. During this time, he has testified before a number of House and Senate committees on subjects ranging from Social Security and pension reform to improving the nation’s flood insurance program. John has been published and quoted extensively in many major publications, and has appeared on national and syndicated radio and television shows. Prior to joining Heritage, John worked on Capitol Hill in the offices of Reps. Mark Sanford, Matt Rinaldo, and Doug Barnard Jr. In the private sector, he was a Vice President at the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, specializing in public policy development, and also worked for the National Association of Federal Credit Unions and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2005, he received his MBA and MA from the University of Georgia.

Wilhelmina A. Leigh is a Senior Research Associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Throughout her career, she has analyzed issues in the areas of income security, asset building, health policy, housing policy, and employment. Prior to joining the Joint Center, she was a principal analyst at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and had also worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Institute, and the National Urban League. Leigh has taught at Georgetown, Harvard, and Howard universities, and the University of Virginia. She has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1996. During 2011, she served as a member of the Commission to Modernize Social Security, whose report recommends ways to guarantee future solvency for the program while simultaneously improving the adequacy of the benefits provided. Leigh received her Ph.D. in economics from the Johns Hopkins University and her A.B., also in economics, from Cornell University.

Lisa M. Lynch is Dean and Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. She is currently a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a member of the National Academies Committee on National Statistics, and president-elect of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. From 1995-1997 Lynch was the Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor; she has also served as a director (2004-2009), Deputy Chair, and Chair (2007-2009) of the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston as well as Chair of the Conference of Chairmen of the Federal Reserve System (2009). She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Economic Policy Institute, and IZA in Bonn, Germany. Lynch has been a faculty member at Tufts University, M.I.T., The Ohio State University, and the University of Bristol and has published extensively on issues such as the impact of technological change and organizational innovation (especially training) on productivity and wages, the determinants of youth unemployment, and the school to work transition. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in economics and political science from Wellesley College.

Suzanne Mettler is the Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, where she conducts research and teaches on American politics and public policy. Her most recent book is The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Programs Undermine American Democracy (2011). Her earlier books include Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (1998), which was awarded the Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on U.S. national policy, and Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (2005), which also won the Kammerer Award as well as the Greenstone Prize of the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. She is coeditor, with Joe Soss and Jacob Hacker, of Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (2007), and coeditor with Lawrence R. Jacobs of a special issue of the Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law focused on “Public Opinion, Health Policy and American Politics.” She has published numerous articles in journals and book chapters in edited volumes. Mettler is a Fellow of the Century Foundation and a member of the steering committee of the Scholars Strategy Network. She is the recipient of an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and grants from the Spencer Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation.

Marilyn Moon is senior vice president and director of the Health Program at the American Institutes for Research, where her current work focuses on the role of informing consumers, providers and policy makers about health care issues, issues in delivery system innovations, and approaches to Medicare reform. A nationally-known economist and expert on Medicare, aging, consumer health issues, and health care financing, Moon has also served as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and as a public trustee for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. She is currently the project director for the Community Forum, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded project on promoting stakeholder participation in evidence-based research. She has been an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, a senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, and the founding director of the Public Policy Institute of the American Association of Retired Persons. Her earlier work focused on health care financing and public policy issues with a particular emphasis on Medicare cost of health care and its impact on access to care. She has served on a number of boards for non-profit organizations, including the Medicare Rights Center and the National Academy of Social Insurance. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Moon earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Monique Morrissey is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, where she conducts research on Social Security, retirement security, labor policy, Medicare, and related policies. Her areas of interest also include executive compensation, the Federal Reserve, and financial markets. Prior to joining EPI in 2006, she previously worked at the AFL-CIO Office of Investment and the Financial Markets Center. Morrissey holds a Ph.D. in Economics from American University, and a B.A. in Political Science and History from Swarthmore College.

Tricia Neuman is a senior vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy. She is widely regarded as an expert on Medicare policy issues. Neuman’s work at the Foundation focuses on a broad range of issues pertaining to the Medicare program and the population it serves. Before joining the Foundation in 1995, she served for six years on the professional staff of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health in the U.S. House of Representatives, and for three years on the staff of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging working on health and long-term care issues. Neuman received a Doctorate of Science degree in health policy and management and a Master’s of Science degree in health finance and management from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.

Len M. Nichols is Director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University. Previously, he was Director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation.  Prior to that, he was Vice President of the Center for Studying Health System Change and a Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute. He was a Senior Advisor for Health Policy at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he managed and coordinated cost and revenue estimation for the Administration’s Health Security Act and other legislative proposals. Prior to that, he was a visiting Public Health Service Fellow at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.  Nichols has written numerous publications, including Managing the Medicare Health Insurance Market for Beneficiaries and Taxpayers andRegulating Non-Group Health Insurance Markets: What Have We Learned So Far. He was a member of the Competitive Pricing Advisory Commission of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Care Financing Administration, 1998-2000. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1999, Nichols received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Kavita Patel, M.D., is a fellow in the Economic Studies program and managing director for clinical transformation and delivery at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution. She is a practicing primary care internist at Johns Hopkins Medicine. She also served in the Obama Administration as director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement in the White House. As a senior aide to Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s senior advisor, she played a critical role in policy development and evaluation of policy initiatives connected to health reform, financial regulatory reform, and economic recovery issues. As deputy staff director on health, she served as a policy analyst and trusted aide to the late Senator Edward Kennedy and was part of the senior staff of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. She also has an extensive research and clinical background, having worked as a researcher at the RAND Corporation and as a practicing physician in both California and Oregon. She earned her medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center, and her master’s in public health from the University of California–Los Angeles.

Robert D. Reischauer is an economist and one of two public trustees of Social Security and Medicare. He is a nationally known expert on federal budget policy, Congress, social welfare issues, education, and state and local fiscal issues. Most recently (2000-2012), he served as President of the Urban Institute. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Senior Vice President of the Urban Institute, and Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 1975, he helped Alice Rivlin, the first Director, set up CBO and held several positions in the organization. Reischauer served as a co-chair of the National Academy of Social Insurance’s ninth annual conference, “Medicare: Preparing for the Challenges of the 21st Century,” in 1997 and as chair of the Academy’s “Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term” Steering Committee. A founding member of the Academy, Reischauer received the Academy’s Robert M. Ball Award in 2012. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.

Alice M. Rivlin is a Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution and a Visiting Professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University. Rivlin served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 1996 to 1999 and was director of the Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton administration. In addition, she was the founding director at the Congressional Budget Office, served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and was named by President Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She also co-chaired, along with former Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction. A founding member of NASI, Rivlin received a Ph.D. in economics from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and a B.A. in economics from Bryn Mawr College.

Maya Rockeymoore is the President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a consulting firm dedicated to making policy work for people, communities, and the environment. She also directs Leadership for Healthy Communities, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Rockeymoore has previously served as the Vice President of Research and Programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), Senior Resident Scholar at the National Urban League, Chief Of Staff to Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), Professional Staff on the House Ways and Means Committee, and as a CBCF Legislative Fellow in the office of Congressman Melvin Watt (D-NC). In 2011, she co-chaired the Commission to Modernize Social Security. Rockeymoore’s areas of expertise include health disparities, health care reform, social insurance, income security, education, and Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare policy. Rockeymoore serves on the boards of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the National Association of Counties, among others, and is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. The recipient of many honors, she was named an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow in 2004 and is the recipient of Running Start’s 2007 Young Women to Watch Award. Rockeymoore holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science and public policy from Purdue University.

Janet L. Shikles (conference co-chair) is a health policy consultant primarily working for integrated health care systems including Geisinger Health System and Denver Health. She has also worked for the March of Dimes, the National Committee on Quality Assurance, the Commonwealth Fund, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. Previously she was involved in a project for the World Bank, the Department for International Development (the U.K.’s foreign aid office) and the Chinese government to help design and pilot-test a health care system for the urban poor (which was  tested in four provinces) and the rural poor (which was tested in 71 rural counties). She has also held the position of Vice President, Health Care Research and Consulting, at Abt Associates and was the Executive Director of the Commonwealth Fund’s Task Force on the Future of Health Insurance. Prior to this she was the Assistant Comptroller General at the U.S. General Accounting Office in Washington, DC, where she was responsible for GAO’s work relating to health, education, labor, social security, veterans affairs and welfare. She was also an Associate at Booz Allen & Hamilton and a senior analyst at the Department of Health and Human Services. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1992, she has served on its Board of Directors and as its Secretary. She was a member of the Academy’s Steering Committee for the project, Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term, and also chaired its study panel on Fee-for-Service Medicare. Shikles holds an M.S.W. from Howard University and an M.A. from George Washington University.

John B. Shoven is the Wallace R. Hawley Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics at Stanford. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He specializes in public finance and corporate finance and has published on Social Security, health economics, corporate and personal taxation, mutual funds, pension plans, economic demography and applied general equilibrium economics. His books include Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security and Health Care Reform (2008), The Evolving Pension System (2005), and The Real Deal: The History and Future of Social Security (1999). In total, he has published more than one hundred professional articles and twenty books. Shoven is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of the Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, and an award winning teacher at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1973 and has been associated with Stanford ever since. He was Dean of Humanities and Sciences from 1993 to 1998. He is Chairman of the Board of Board of Cadence Design Systems and serves on the boards of American Century Funds, Exponent, Inc. and Financial Engines, Inc.

Damon A. Silvers is the Director of Policy and Special Counsel for the AFL-CIO.  He joined the AFL-CIO as Associate General Counsel in 1997. He also serves on a pro bono basis as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the state of New York. He is also a member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department’s Financial Research Advisory Committee, and the Standing and Investor Advisory Groups of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Silvers has previously served as Deputy Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, as Chair of the Competition Subcommittee of the Treasury Department’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession, and as a member of the Treasury Department’s Investor’s Practice Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Prior to working for the AFL-CIO, he worked for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, and as a law clerk at the Delaware Court of Chancery. He led the legal team that won severance payments for laid off Enron and WorldCom workers. Silvers received his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School. He received his M.B.A. with high honors from Harvard Business School and is a Baker Scholar.

Eugene Steuerle (conference co-chair) is an Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair at the Urban Institute. Prior to this, he was the Vice-President of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute, former President of the National Tax Association (2001-2002), and former Chair of the 1999 Social Security Technical Panel. Earlier in his career, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as well as the original organizer and Economic Staff Coordinator of the Project for Fundamental Tax Reform, which led to the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In addition, Steuerle has served as the Director of Finance and Taxation Projects and Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and as a Federal Executive Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He has published many books, reports and articles, and Congressional testimonies. His recent books include Contemporary U.S. Tax Policy, Social Security and the Family, The Government We Deserve, Retooling Social Security for the 21st Century, and Serving Children with Disabilities. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Journal on Social Security, Pensions, and Retirement Income of the Social Insurance Research Network (SIRN). A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 1990, Steuerle received his Ph.D. in economics with distinction in public finance from the University of Wisconsin.

Fernando Torres-Gil (conference co-chair) is a Professor at the University of California–Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs, and is the Director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging. Previously, he was Assistant Secretary for Aging for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was the Chief Advisor to the President and the Secretary on all matters affecting older persons. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA and Professor of Gerontology and Public Administration at the University of Southern California. He served as Staff Director for the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging and held key positions in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is the author of many publications, including Diversity in Aging: Challenges Facing Planners and Policymakers in the 1990s and The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. A founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Torres-Gil currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Journal on Poverty, Income Distribution, and Income Assistance of the Social Insurance Research Network (SIRN). He received his Ph.D. in social policy, planning and research from Brandeis University.

Timothy P. Trysla is a partner in the Health Care Group of Alston & Bird, LLP. Previously, he served as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he also served as a liaison for CMS to the White House and Congress on Medicare reform and prescription drug coverage issues. Trysla worked as administrator-designee and speechmaker to large medical specialty and beneficiary groups and helped manage the development, passage and implementation the Medicare Part D program. He was previously Associate Director of Legislative Affairs at Greenberg Traurig and served as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Bill Archer (TX) on legislative issues including healthcare, welfare, Social Security, and labor. Trysla received a J.D. from Catholic University and has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2010.

David Wessel is economics editor for The Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the economy and forces shaping living standards around the world. He appears frequently on National Public Radio and WETA’s “Washington Week.” Wessel has written two New York Times best-sellers: Red Ink: Inside the High Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget (2012) and In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic (2009), and co-authored Prosperity (1998). He shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for 1983 Boston Globe stories on the persistence of racism in Boston and the other for 2002 stories in The Wall Street Journal on corporate wrong-doing. He has served as The Wall Street Journal’s Berlin bureau chief and Washington deputy bureau chief. Wessel previously worked for the Boston Globe, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and Middletown (Conn.) Press. A 1975 graduate of Haverford College, he was Knight Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism at Columbia University in 1980-81.

Gail Wilensky is an economist and a senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health foundation. Her focus has been on strategies to reform health care, with particular emphasis in recent years on Medicare, comparative effectiveness research and military health care. Wilensky serves as a trustee of the Combined Benefits Fund of the United Mine Workers of America and the National Opinion Research Center, is on the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), Geisinger Health System Foundation and the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Medical School. She recently served as president of the Defense Health Board, was a commissioner on the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, and co-chaired the Dept. of Defense Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care. She was the Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (now called CMS) from 1990-1992 and Deputy Assistant for Policy Development to President George H W Bush in 1992. She chaired the Physician Payment Review Commission from 1995-1997 and MedPAC from 1997-2001. Wilensky is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and has served two terms on its governing council. She has also served on the board of directors or trustees for numerous organizations, including Academy Health, the American Heart Association, and the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. She is also a director of United Health Group and Quest Diagnostics. Wilensky received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan and has received several honorary degrees.

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group, a Washington, DC, strategic planning and survey research firm. Winston has served as a strategic advisor to Senate and House Republican leadership for the past 10 years. He was formerly the Director of Planning for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and advises center-right political parties throughout Europe. Winston was also a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he did statistical policy analysis and econometric modeling. In the private sector, he has advised Fortune 100 companies on strategic planning and brand reputation. Winston has lectured at The Wharton of School of Business, MIT, Harvard, Georgetown, William and Mary, George Washington, American University, Miami of Ohio, and the National War College. He authored the chapter on Strategy for the college textbook Campaigns and Elections American Style, and he is credited for originating the concept of “security mom.” Winston is an election analyst for CBS News, and frequently appears on cable and network news.