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Moira Forbes is a health policy leader with over 25 years of experience working with state and federal agencies on Medicaid and CHIP policy and operations. She focuses on providing time-sensitive, evidence-based analysis to support policymaking, operational planning, and program evaluation. She has worked with a wide range of health care stakeholders including providers, employers, public and private payers, foundations, trade associations, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other health and human services agencies, state legislatures, and Congress. These diverse experiences help her provide well-informed insights for clients at all stages of the program lifecycle.

Shelby Hickman is a mixed methods research and evaluation professional with 14 years of experience in program evaluation, training and technical assistance, and analysis of criminal and juvenile justice administrative data. Dr. Hickman has expertise in overseeing studies funded by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. She has experience in causal inference methods for both random assignment and quasi-experimental designs. Additionally, she is proficient in qualitative methodologies, such as semi-structured interviews, focus groups, cognitive interviews, and observations. Hickman is also an expert in forced labor and human trafficking.

Cheryl Doty is an economic growth specialist with more than 25 years of experience managing and implementing donor-funded programs across 15 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. She has provided technical leadership to programs focused on enterprise development, trade & competitiveness, market system strengthening, agribusiness, food security, and resilience. Doty excels at managing high-profile USAID programs, including indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts, and blanket purchase agreements (BPAs). She is skilled at establishing strategic relationships with high-level government officials, implementing partners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector. Doty has a strong track record of leading the capture, design, and development of winning USAID proposals. 

Dr. Stephanie Frost has over 15 years of experience working in public health research and evaluation, in areas including program evaluation, communications formative research, and evaluation technical assistance. Dr. Frost specializes in chronic disease prevention and management but has also leveraged her technical skillset to lead projects focused on adolescent health, the opioid epidemic, and Veteran-related disability. Having worked at the federal, state, and local levels and having produced research products for a range of audiences, she brings a strong understanding of the different informational needs across stakeholder groups and the importance of translating research to build capacity and facilitate program improvement. With a background in the social determinants of health and assessing the contextual factors influencing public health and public health programs, Dr. Frost also applies an implementation science lens to her work and has led multiple implementation-focused studies.  Her work has helped clients identify and address research and practice gaps, implement workflows, assess program impacts, and reach key audiences with critical public health-focused information and resources. Through her work she has also developed numerous reports, briefs, informational materials, presentations, and peer-reviewed publications.

Qing Zheng, Ph.D., MHSA, is a health economist with over ten years of experience working in health services and policy research. His primary research interest is in healthcare quality and costs, with a focus on post-acute care, long-term care and population aging. Dr. Zheng has expertise with quantitative methods and econometric models to design and conduct program evaluations as well as implementations of innovative payment models. In addition, he has extensive experience in managing and analyzing real-world healthcare data such as Medicare claims, clinical assessments, survey data, and Medicare cost reports.

Julie Sabol started her career in advertising and product placement for Macy's. After a few years in the commercial market, she began her 26-year career in designing social marketing campaigns, public health education materials, and consumer advocacy programs for the federal government.  A hallmark of her expertise, Ms. Sabol brings a blend of strategic thinking, evidence-based insights, and target audience positioning to develop robust multimedia campaigns and digital products.

Dr. Heinrich Hock is an economist with 19 years of experience conducting research on labor, education, disability, and social insurance. His work focuses on producing results that help policymakers and program staff understand program outcomes for priority populations and research-based options for improving outcomes. He develops rigorous and feasible plans for research designs, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of findings.

Kate Durocher has more than 25 years of experience in marketing and communication. The first half of her career focused heavily on digital marketing and activation for consumer and pharmaceutical brands when she worked at advertising agencies and as a marketing director for WebMD. For the past decade she has focused on public health communication and community engagement for federal clients. 

Researcher and policy analyst Karin Martinson has extensive knowledge of workforce development and income security policies affecting low-income populations.  With more than 30 years of experience, her research focuses on identifying effective strategies to assist disadvantaged groups seeking to gain a foothold in the labor market. The groups include low-skilled adults, cash-assistance recipients, the long-term unemployed, and those with disabilities or substance use disorders. She oversees Abt’s large portfolio of work at the U.S. Department of Labor and has worked with a wide range of federal and state agencies and philanthropic organizations.  She has led numerous research and evaluation projects, primarily in workforce and income support arena, as a project director, principal investigator, task leader, and content expert. She co-authored more than 50 research reports and briefs and contributed to published volumes on workforce policy. 

Hailu Zelelew is an economist with 30 years of experience in health financing/economics, health insurance, health policy processes, health systems strengthening and economic development. He has worked on development planning and economic cooperation; policy analysis and development; rural development; program design and management; maternal, newborn and child health; family planning and reproductive health; HIV/AIDS; and capacity building. His financial expertise includes health program costing, resource tracking, health financing policy, health insurance, public financial management, and governance. He also has extensive experience with monitoring, evaluation and research.