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Kathleen Flanagan is president and chief executive officer of Abt Global. She assumed the position on October 1, 2009, after a distinguished career working across the broad range of markets and policy areas that reflect the company's business today. Flanagan joined the company in 1983 as a policy analyst in the Health Area. In 1989 she became managing vice president of the company's Labor Economics Research Area, overseeing research on workforce development and income security programs. In the mid-1990s she launched the International Workforce and Education Practice, winning projects from clients including the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank and U.S. Department of Labor. In 1998, she launched the company's Housing and Community Revitalization practice and built a team of more than 75 researchers and technical assistance staff working on affordable housing and community development policies at the federal, state and local levels. In 2005, she was named group vice president for social, economic, and health policy.

Clark Abt, an engineer, environmentalist, entrepreneur, educator and social scientist, is the founder and past president of Abt Global Inc. He served as Abt’s President from 1965 to 1985, Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1986 to 2005, and was then elected Chairman Emeritus. He is the author of 10 books on social and economic policies and advanced technologies, as well as many articles.Clark Abt was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1929, and came to the United States in 1937. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a freshman in aeronautical engineering in 1947 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in general engineering in 1951. He then served four months in the Merchant Marine as an ordinary seaman, followed by a year at Johns Hopkins University as an English instructor, obtaining an M.A. from the Department of Writing, Speech and Drama for this master thesis, “A Year of Poems.”

Etienne Fondjo is a medical entomologist specializing in malaria with 20 years of experience in project management and malaria control funded by the public sector and its partners. He has served as the national malaria coordinator and as the deputy national malaria coordinator in Cameroon’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). He has also consulted for the World Health Organization (WHO) in five countries, served as principal investigator for 11 projects in Cameroon, and was the Central Africa coordinator for the Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa (MARA) project in nine countries.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Ph.D., is Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as Dean of the Kennedy School from 2016 to 2024 and was previously Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015.Elmendorf has held senior economic positions with the Federal Reserve Board, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the Treasury Department, where he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy. He is a widely respected economist who has deep knowledge of many of Abt’s core research areas, including health care policy and approaches to increasing economic security.Elmendorf is the author of more than 30 publications and has testified before Congress on economic issues 50 times since 2005. 

Daniel Gubits conducts research in the areas of housing, homelessness, economic self-sufficiency and disability policy. Gubits’ expertise is in econometric modeling, data analysis, and random assignment program evaluation.Gubits serves as the director of analysis for the Family Options Study, conducted for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He is also leading the impact analysis work for the Social Security Administration’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) project. Both of these are random assignment impact evaluations.

Dr. Jonathan Dorn has more than 20 years of experience in the environment and energy space. He specializesin air pollutant emissions inventory development, air quality, data visualization, regulatory program support, energy systems, and air pollutant mitigation strategies.

Sarah Prezek is a senior program and project management professional with more than 10 years of experience managing complex federal programs, multidisciplinary teams, and large project portfolios.

James Gilling, regional vice president, East Asia and Pacific, has almost 40 years of experience in social and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. He has overseen Australian aid programs worth hundreds of millions of dollars and managed large teams of Australian and overseas staff, including as head of the Australian aid program in Indonesia. James has worked for United Kingdom (UK) and Papua New Guinea governments as an agricultural economist. He has also worked as a consultant economist with Oxford Policy Management in the UK and was an economic analyst with the Office of National Assessments in Australia.

Elizabeth Giardino’s evaluation and technical assistance work on housing, community development, asset building, and government innovation policies and programs promotes opportunity and healthy outcomes for people across the U.S. Giardino specializes in leading teams, strategic planning, and relationship building, and has proven expertise in incorporating community-based participatory research into technical assistance engagements.