Search

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. 

Lisa Simeon is Abt Global’s Chief Operations Officer.  In this role, Simeon is establishing a global operations function to cover all aspects of project management. It will include continuous improvement and scalability of Abt’s standards, processes, and digital platforms for project start-up and closeout, workforce planning, risk management, and quality review to achieve strong financial performance and ensure client satisfaction across the company. She will continue to oversee Human Resources and will add responsibility for global security operations and emergency response to her portfolio.

Laura Blake has more than 20 years of experience in leading scientific programs and research in the environmental science and policy domain. She has deep expertise in surface water quality restoration and protection and has spent her career designing and implementing scientific studies to support efforts to protect human health and aquatic environments. She has significant knowledge of Clean Water Act rules and regulations and has extensive experience supporting federal and state regulatory programs with implementation of and compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.

Jeffrey (Jeff) Leone is a senior growth leader with more than 20 years of experience leading growth teams and managing complex business development functions such as capture, bids and proposals, market intelligence and competitive assessment, pipeline development, and sales analytics.  Leone’s experience cuts across a range of U.S. domestic and international development markets at Abt and at large, global companies. 

Dr. Heinrich Hock is an economist with 19 years of experience conducting research on labor, education, disability employment, and social insurance. His work focuses on producing results that help policymakers and program staff understand 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. Hock has led work on over a dozen labor-related projects for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and other funders to assess the outcomes for groups such as dislocated workers, youth and adult jobseekers with disabilities, and veterans, among other groups. Hock also has played a key role in U.S. Department of Education (ED) studies to identify solutions for improving career outcomes among special education and adult education participants. 

Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder is the former Vice President and World Bank Group Chief Risk Officer (2014-2024). Lakshmi was previously Chief Financial Officer at the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and Director of Risk and Financial Policy at the International Finance Corporation both also part of the World Bank Group.

Ally Lynch has nine years of experience managing international development and humanitarian projects in the Asia Pacific region. She has led programming across a range of impact areas, including nature-based solutions for climate, food security, livelihoods, climate resilience, and disaster risk reduction.

Philippa Venning has more than 25 years of experience working in international development across the Asia Pacific for government, the private sector, multilateral organisations and NGOs.