Abeba Taddese Named Executive Director of Results for All;
Results for America’s Karen Anderson Joins the University of Chicago’s
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics
WASHINGTON – Results for America (RFA) announced today that Ben Harris, former Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, will be joining RFA as Chief Economist and Senior Advisor starting this September, and Abeba Taddese, Program Director of Results for All, has been named Executive Director of Results for All.
Karen Anderson, who has served the last two years as Senior Advisor for Results for America and Executive Director of Results for All, is starting a new position this week as Senior Director for Policy, Communications & External Affairs at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago.
“Ben Harris is one of America’s most innovative leaders on economic policy – respected on both sides of the aisle for his work on budget, taxes, retirement security and more – and we are thrilled to have him join the Results for America team,” said Michele Jolin, CEO and Co-founder of Results for America. “Abeba Taddese has spent her career helping improve outcomes for vulnerable populations worldwide, and we are grateful that she will lead Results for All’s efforts to promote the use of data and evidence in policymaking around the globe.
“Karen Anderson is a passionate advocate for evidence-based policymaking who has played a critical role in every part of RFA’s work – from spearheading the Senior Fellows program to helping drive national policy reforms to launching and leading Results for All. We look forward to continuing to engage with Karen as she begins her exciting new role at the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.”
Harris will lead Results for America’s economic policy work, coordinate research and policy briefs across a variety of issue areas, and oversee RFA’s bipartisan Senior Fellows program, which includes senior Republican and Democratic advisers and thought leaders who have served at the federal, state and local levels of government. Taddese will lead Results for All’s global initiative to better understand the mechanisms – the policies, processes and practices – that governments around the world are putting in place to promote the use of data and evidence in decision-making, and identify ways in which government initiatives can be supported.
More information on Harris, Taddese and Anderson is below:
Ben Harris is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He previously served as Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Before joining the White House, he was the Policy Director of The Hamilton Project, an Economic Studies Fellow at Brookings, and Deputy Director of the Retirement Security Projects. Harris also worked at the White House as a Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers, was a Senior Research Associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and served on the House Budget Committee staff as a senior economist. Harris has also taught as an adjunct professor at the policy schools at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. His primary areas of focus are tax, budget, and retirement security. Harris has published a variety of papers and policy briefs related to topics in public finance and is regularly cited in media reports related to fiscal policy. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University, in addition to a master’s degree in economics from Cornell University and a master’s degree in Quantitative Methods from Columbia University. He earned his BA in economics at Tufts University. In 2000, Harris was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Namibia.
Abeba Taddese has served as Program Director for Results for All, where she has led the global landscape review on government mechanisms for promoting the use of data and evidence in policymaking. Prior to her work at Results for All, Abeba worked at Results for Development, where she led and supported health systems strengthening activities related to human resources for health, health financing and expansion of health coverage to poor and vulnerable populations. Previously, Abeba worked as a consultant at the World Bank on poverty and gender issues in Sub-Saharan Africa and has worked with several Washington DC area non-profit organizations. Abeba holds an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Karen Anderson has served as Senior Advisor with Results for America and Executive Director of Results for All. Until 2015, Anderson served as Managing Director of The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the Brookings Institution that she helped launch in 2006. Anderson took a leave from The Hamilton Project in 2008 to serve as Chief of Staff for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the presidential transition and in the White House, returning to The Hamilton Project in the spring of 2010. Prior to that she served as a Vice President of State and Local Government Relations for Citigroup Inc. and as Senior Policy Advisor for the law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge. During the first term of the Clinton Administration, Anderson served as a Regional Coordinator in the White House Office of Political Affairs. She previously served as Political Director for the Democratic Party of Georgia. Anderson currently serves on the Advisory Council for The Hamilton Project and as a member of the Board of Visitors for the University of Georgia. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a BA in Economics from Agnes Scott College.
About Results for America
Results for America is helping decision-makers at all levels of government harness the power of evidence and data to address our greatest challenges. Our mission is to make investing in what works the “new normal,” so that when policymakers make decisions, they start by seeking the best evidence and data available, then use what they find to get better results.
About Results for All
Results for All is a global initiative to break down barriers and improve lives by expanding the use of data and evidence by governments. Results for All is identifying the most effective government mechanisms – the people, policies, programs and systems – to produce and use data and evidence, and working to address the key challenges facing policymakers in implementing evidence-informed practices.
Contact: Zachary Coile [email protected]