Susan Nall Bales | Tiffany Manuel | Nat Kendall-Taylor | Yndia Lorick-Wilmot | Kate Vaughan | Shannon Arvizu | Moira O'Neil | Michael Erard | Eric Lindland | Alexis Celeste Bunten | Tia Remington-Bell | Adam F. Simon | Michael Baran | Rob Shore | Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. | Linda Bowen | Claudia Strauss | Curt McPhail | Anna Mikulak | Beth Fisher | Christine Nolan | Matthew LaRocque | Rafi Santo | Yasaman Hashemian | Dylan Arena | Peter Wardrip | Barbara Z. Johnson | Erika Rydberg | Ricky Angel | Holly Valero | Prajwal Kulkarni
Staff
SUSAN NALL BALES is founder and president of
the FrameWorks Institute and senior
fellow at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. She has
served as a visiting scientist in the department of society, human development,
and health at the Harvard School of Public Health and a visiting scholar in
education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has lectured at
Pitzer College and served as a visiting scholar at Brandeis University’s Heller
Graduate School for Social Policy and Management. She is a contributing member to
the National Scientific Council and to the National Forum on Early Childhood
Policy and Programs. .
A veteran communications strategist and issues campaigner, she has more than 30
years of experience researching, designing and implementing campaigns on social
issues. She is the author of numerous articles on public opinion and media
published by Child Development, Sage Publications, the Zero to Three Bulletin,
Society for Research on Child Development and the Center for Research on
Children. She is co-author of the monograph Communications for Social Good,
published by the Foundation Center. Her work has been presented at colloquia
and lectures at Brandeis, Yale, Rice and Harvard Universities and at the White
House.
Before founding FrameWorks in 1999, Bales served for six years as director of
strategic communications and children’s issues at the Benton Foundation, where
she founded www.connectforkids.org,
an award-winning Web gateway for news and research on children’s issues. Bales
served for four years as vice president for communications at the National
Association of Children’s Hospitals, where she helped create the popular “Who’s
for Kids and Who’s Just Kidding?” public advocacy campaign and founded the
Coalition for America’s Children, with more than 350 organizational members.
For eight years she served as president of Public Affairs Research &
Communications, where she designed and managed communications campaigns
nationwide. A graduate of UCLA, she received her M.A. from Middlebury College.
She has served on the Adolescence in the 21st Century Study Group of the
Society for Research on Adolescence. She serves on the Working Group on Prior
Political Movements and Ideological Change, as part of the Ford Foundation’s
Building Knowledge for Social Justice Project.
TIFFANY MANUEL is the Director of Impact and Evaluation for the Institute. Prior to joining FrameWorks, Manuel served as a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she was responsible for conducting and directing public policy research. She has served as a senior researcher at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and has served as an assistant professor of political science and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has worked as an economic development consultant in the areas of program evaluation, comparative regional economic analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and social welfare and labor policy analysis. Manuel holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in political science from Purdue University, and doctorate and master’s degrees in public policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Dr. Manuel can be reached at tmanuel@frameworksinstitute.org.
NAT KENDALL-TAYLOR is the Director of Research at the Institute. In this role, he employs social science theory and research methods from anthropology to improve the ability of public policy to positively influence health and social issues. This involves studying how cognitive theory can be applied in understanding how people interpret information and make meaning of their social worlds. His past research has focused on child and family health and in understanding the social and cultural factors that create health disparities and affect decision-making. As a medical anthropologist, Kendall-Taylor has conducted fieldwork on the coast of Kenya studying pediatric epilepsy and the impacts of chronic illness on family well-being. He has also applied social science methods in research in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and has conducted ethnographic research on motivation in “extreme” athletes. Kendall-Taylor has a B.A. from Emory University and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Kendall-Taylor can be reached at nkendall-taylor@frameworksinstitute.org.
YNDIA LORICK-WILMOT is a senior associate at the Institute with responsibilities for both Field Building and Research. Lorick-Wilmot is a trained sociologist in the areas of race, ethnic identity, immigration, and human services. Prior to joining FrameWorks, Lorick-Wilmot held a post-doctoral fellowship in sociology for the Panamanian Council of New York in collaboration with the Institute for Pan American Affairs on a project entitled “Opening Doors to African Descendants in Panama.” She has served as a consultant for nonprofits, philanthropic foundations, and several research centers in Boston and New York City in the areas of public policy research, program management, evaluation and content analysis. She has served as senior lecturer for Northeastern University’s College for Professional Studies. Lorick-Wilmot has authored and presented papers at academic conferences that explore the experiences of marginalized racial-ethnics and immigrants through a lens that emphasizes reducing inequality. Most recently, she is author of the book Creating Black Caribbean Ethnic Identity, which is part of the series The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society (LFB Academic Publishing). Lorick-Wilmot holds a B.A. in sociology from Trinity College (Connecticut), a Graduate Certificate in women’s studies from the Radcliffe Consortium in Women’s Studies, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Northeastern University.
Dr. Lorick-Wilmot can be reached at ylorickwilmot@frameworksinstitute.org.
SHANNON ARVIZU is a senior associate with the Institute. She is a sociologist trained in frame analysis to influence social, cultural, and technological change. She builds upon a social movement perspective to bring attention to the role that frames play in building powerful networks of individuals and organizations for desired social change. Her most recent research shows how an influential network of advocacy organizations used frame transformation to shift policies and industry practices towards clean car production in the U.S. auto industry. She has also documented how frames stimulate the development of civic identities amongst young people in the Middle East. In addition, Shannon has worked in the social media field as a writer, video journalist, and online campaign consultant. Shannon holds a B.A. in History from U.C. Berkeley, an M.A. in Anthropology-Sociology from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University.
Dr. Arvizu can be reached at: sarvizu@frameworksinstitute.org.
MOIRA O'NEIL is Senior Researcher and Manager with the Institute. In this role, she works with an interdisciplinary team employing a range of methods to further public understanding of social issues. O’Neil is trained as a sociologist, earning her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara. O’Neil has a broad range of research interests and experiences. Her master’s thesis was an in-depth analysis of racial imagery in popular fitness magazines, and her dissertation examined the medicalization of war trauma at the turn of the twentieth century in the United States. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a research associate on projects related to immigration policy as well as illicit drug use and drug policy.
Dr. O'Neil can be reached at moneil@frameworksinstitute.org.
MICHAEL ERARD is a senior researcher with the Institute, developing robust simplifying models and testing them in the field. Prior to joining FrameWorks, he wrote about language, linguists, and linguistics for The New York Times, Science, Wired, New Scientist, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. In 2008 he received a Dobie Paisano writing fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the author of Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, a natural history of speech disfluency and speech errors, and a cultural history of fluency. He has been researching language superlearners and the upper limits of the ability to speak and learn languages for Babel No More, culminating in a book to be published by Henry Holt & Co. in 2011. He earned his B.A. from Williams College, and an M.A. in linguistics and Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Erard can be reached at merard@frameworksinstitute.org.
ERIC LINDLAND is a senior researcher with the Institute. Prior to joining FrameWorks, he taught anthropology at Emory University, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame, and before that was a high school teacher and administrator in Guatemala. As a cognitive anthropologist, his research has focused on how analogies are used in language, symbolism, and ethics to bridge meanings between differing cultural systems. In particular, he has engaged cultural modeling theory to explore the intersection of African and Western religious and medical systems. His ethnographic and historical research in Malawi centered on the challenges of therapeutic decision-making in a pluralistic religious and medical culture, and on people’s creative development of new models that combine and correlate magical, spiritual, and biomedical healing techniques. Lindland has a B.A. in political studies from Gordon College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Emory University.
Dr. Lindland can be reached at elindland@frameworksinstitute.org.
ALEXIS CELESTE BUNTEN is a senior researcher with the institute and a Ford postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz, where she is currently working on a project theorizing indigenous capitalism(s). Bunten received a B.A. in art history at Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology at UCLA. She was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley 2006-2008, where she expanded upon research looking into processes of cultural commoditization and expression of indigenous identities through tourism, media and performing "the Other" in response to global patterns of consumption. In addition to her scholarly endeavors, Bunten has worked for the Sealaska Heritage Institute, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, the Nerland Agency for the Alaska Federation of Natives, BBC for the Discovery Channel, Ibis Designs for the National Black MBA Association, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Sitka Tribal Enterprises' Tribal Tours, and Project HOOP (a Native American Performing Arts organization). Bunten's areas of expertise include the heritage industry, cultural production and consumption, interpretation, cross-cultural communication, community development, tourism, and the anthropology of work. She has published in American Ethnologist, American Indian Quarterly, the London Journal of Tourism, Sport and Creative Industries, and contributed chapters in the volumes Exploring World Art (Waveland Press) and Great Expectations: Imagination, Anticipation and Enchantment in Tourism (Berghann Books). Her book, "So, how long have you been native?" A Season Working as an Alaskan Tour Guide (University of Nebraska Press), is forthcoming.
Dr. Bunten can be reached at abunten@frameworksinstitute.org.
ADAM F. SIMON
is a senior researcher with the Institute. He has taught courses in political communication and American politics at Yale, the University of Washington and UCLA. His latest major work, “Toward a Theory Relating Political Discourse, Media and Public Opinion,” won the American Political Science Association/International Communication Association award for Best Article in Political Communication for 2008. His current work, Mass Informed Consent: Upgrading Democracy with Polls and New Media, popularizes polling and public opinion research by introducing social scientific techniques in three empirical studies and relating media to polling results. His first book—The Winning Message: Candidate Behavior, Campaign Discourse and Democracy—broke new ground in investigating candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns. His work has also appeared in the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Communication as well as other scholarly journals. Simon earned his Ph.D. in political science from UCLA.
Dr. Simon can be reached at asimon@frameworksinstitute.org.
MICHAEL BARAN is a senior researcher at the Institute. His past research has focused on the cultural and cognitive factors influencing how children across different cultures learn about race, ethnicity, and other categories of identity. This research has taken him through Brazil, Guatemala, Spain, and the United States. Prior to joining FrameWorks, he taught courses on race and diversity, Latin America, child development, expository writing, and research methods at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. He has consulted for schools and businesses about a range of diversity-related issues. He also created two popular interactive iPhone apps: Guess My Race, targeted to teenagers and adults, and Who Am I? Race Awareness Game, designed for adults to play with younger children. Both apps were developed to make learning about race fun by integrating art, technology, and game play with academic insights from various disciplines. Michael holds a B.A. from Emory University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Baran can be reached at mbaran@frameworksinstitute.org.
TIA REMINGTON-BELL is a junior associate at the Institute. She graduated from Colorado College with a B.A. in cultural anthropology. She has worked as a field manager, canvassing and organizing a grassroots support movement for nonprofit organizations, and as a volunteer in the 2008 presidential campaign. Her senior thesis examined patterns of culture as expressed in social networking sites among military spouses.
Ms. Remington-Bell can be reached at trembell@frameworksinstitute.org.
ROB SHORE is associate and manager of public presentation at the Institute. He specializes in the public presentation of research findings and oversees the production of video-based media. Previously, Shore wrote and directed the documentary film And Many More, which examines American conceptions of age and personhood through the lens of the birthday ritual. His writing and photography have been published in Smithsonian Magazine, Worldview Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Porchlight, Anderbo, Juked, and the "Best American Poetry Blog." His essay "Time Travel" is forthcoming in the collection Being There: Learning to Live Cross-Culturally (Harvard University Press). Shore graduated from Emory University in 2006 with degrees in film and anthropology. His honors thesis examined cinematic myths of the dysfunctional American family.
Mr. Shore can be reached at rshore@frameworksinstitute.org.
Erika Rydberg is a relatively new D.C. transplant born and raised in Massachusetts. She graduated from Emerson College in the spring of 2008 with a degree in Communication Studies and a specialization in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. Shortly after she spent a year in the AmeriCorps*VISTA program. She recently completed her master's in Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. While at GW she completed a documentary short on prisoner re-entry with classmates. She also did research on The Daily Show's interaction with other media outlets and completed a practicum course on strategic communication. At FrameWorks, Erika works with the Public Presentation Unit, producing digital media.
Ms. Rydberg can be reached at erydberg@frameworksinstitute.org.
Fellows
FRANKLIN D. GILLIAM JR. is a senior fellow with the Institute and dean of the School of Public Affairs at UCLA. He has served since 2002 as UCLA’s first-ever associate vice chancellor of community partnerships. In that role, he built a strong program of academic civic engagement through the Center for Community Partnerships. He is the founding director of the Center for Communications and Community at UCLA. At FrameWorks, Gilliam has served as project director for the Framing Race in America Project and has contributed to projects on health care, early child development, youth, and rural issues.
Gilliam is the author of Farther to Go: Reading and Cases in African-American Politics (Harcourt Brace), and has published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Social Policy Report, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Politics, Nieman Reports, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Social Science Quarterly, Public Opinion, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Government and Policy, Sociological Inquiry, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Psychology, Ethiopian Review and The Source.
In 2004 Gilliam was awarded the Mark O. Hatfield National Scholar Award, Portland State University, and in 2006 he was presented with the Distinguished Alumni, University of Iowa, 2006. Gilliam received his B.A. from Drake University and his Ph.D. from University of Iowa.
LINDA BOWEN is a fellow with the Institute and has been executive director of the Institute for Community Peace in Washington, D. C., since its inception in 1995. She has over twenty-five years of experience in violence prevention, program management and development, policy analysis, research and community building. Prior to joining ICP, she served as special assistant to the commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration; assistant dean at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago; and program director at the Center for Successful Child Development in Chicago, Ill. (a precursor of community-based, comprehensive parent engagement and child development programs). Bowen had authored or co-authored papers and reports on child development, adolescent pregnancy, and parenting and violence prevention.
CLAUDIA STRAUSS is a fellow with the Institute and professor of anthropology at Pitzer College, Claremont, Calif. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University, and her B.A. from Brown University. Strauss has expertise in the areas of cognitive anthropology; psychological anthropology; language, culture and society; race/class/gender variation in the U.S.; social theory and culture theory; discourse analysis; and anthropology of policy. Prior to joining the faculty at Pitzer, Strauss was assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. She has co-authored A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning with Naomi Quinn (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and is the co-editor of Human Motives and Cultural Models with Roy D’Andrade (Cambridge University Press, 1992).1992).
CURT MCPHAIL is a fellow with the Institute and program officer at the Mary Black Foundation, a private foundation focused on early childhood development and active living in Spartanburg, S.C. An avid cyclist and bike commuter, McPhail is also the founder of globalbike, a nonprofit organization that believes in the transformative power of bicycles to create social change throughout the developing world. Globalbike currently connects community care workers with bicycles in Zambia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda and Bolivia. Prior to joining the Mary Black Foundation, McPhail worked for Stop The Violence, a community-based violence prevention organization. In this role, he organized residents of two of Spartanburg’s most violent neighborhoods around issues of housing and violence. A graduate of Wofford College, McPhail spends his free time hiking, biking, or exploring the trails around the upstate of South Carolina with his wife and two sons.
ANNA MIKULAK is a graduate fellow with the Institute and a doctoral student of developmental science at Georgetown University. She received her B.A. from Georgetown University in psychology, with a minor in cognitive science. Previously, she conducted research investigating the possible immune system involvement in the etiology of autism-like behaviors. Having always been interested in the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and policy, she hopes to learn more about how issues are framed and the effect of framing on both policymakers and the public. In her dissertation, she plans to investigate the various ways in which child development research is disseminated and understood.
HOLLY VALERO is a fellow with the Institute and President and owner of HollyWorks. She specializes in creating smarter Websites that combine accessibility and visual impact with intuitive design and organic searchability. Valero’s sixteen years of Internet-specific expertise combines with over twenty years of traditional media experience in the radio, television, newspaper and educational publishing industries. A writer, activist and artist, Valero is advising FrameWorks on its next generation of interactive, educational products and tools.
PRAJWAL KULKARNI received his PhD in applied physics from Stanford University in 2009, and his B.S. in electrical engineering and physics from Penn State University in 2003. While his dissertation centered on space physics, Prajwal has always been interested in the intersection of science and society. He designed and taught classes on science policy as a graduate student. From 2009 – 2011, Prajwal served as a Science Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In this role, Prajwal helped develop and deploy an environmental decision support system, coordinated numerous meetings and conferences. and organized a major conference panel on climate change communication. In his spare time, Prajwal trains for and competes in triathlons.
Ricky Angel was born and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. He graduated from the University of San Francisco in the spring of 2010, where he majored in Media Studies with a concentration on the Political Economy of Media. In 2008, he interned at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the premier alternative newspaper in San Francisco. He also worked as a research assistant for Media-Alliance, an organization of media workers with the intent to orient media to the public interest. While attending USF, Ricky filmed and directed a documentary called ‘Sit Lie,’ which centered on a proposed San Francisco measure that would bar people from sitting or lying on sidewalks. Shortly after graduating, he wrote his debut novel, Fallen Utopia. Currently, Ricky is working on his second novel.
Administration
BETH FISHER serves as FrameWorks’ director of administration. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communications from Towson University, Fisher worked in some of Baltimore’s leading advertising firms as a production manager. She spent ten years overseeing print production of numerous brochures, outdoor boards, print ads, posters, radio ads, and specialty items. During this time, Fisher formed relationships with the industry’s most talented printers, illustrators, photographers, and broadcast production facilities. At the same time, she was busy earning a master’s degree in early childhood development from Loyola College. For the past six years she’s put her management and organizational skills to work for FrameWorks Institute — helping to supervise projects of all sizes and complexities.
CHRISTINE NOLANserves as an administrative associate with the Institute. She received her B.S. from Drexel University in design and merchandising. After serving several years in management within the retail industry, her focus moved to advertising and public relations. As a director of production for two of the mid-Atlantic’s top firms, Nolan was responsible for purchasing and managing several million dollars in printing and production services annually. With over 13 years of field experience, she uses her leadership, communication and administrative skills to support FrameWorks’ organizational development and project management.
