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MIchelle Wood has more than 30 years of experience managing large-scale national program evaluations and applied social science research. She has managed several national random assignment studies.Wood is the project director for the Social Security Administration’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration Project. She manages a large team, including subcontractors and consultants, to implement and evaluate a $1-for-$2 benefit offset for the Social Security Disability Insurance program. The project scope of work includes designing and executing large-scale participant outreach and recruitment, implementing secure data systems, managing complex data collection, designing a communications strategy, operating a call center, providing training and technical assistance to local agencies, and documenting the results in process, participation, net impact and cost-benefit analyses. 

Beth Boulay has 15 years of experience using robust evaluation tools and methods to generate evidence practitioners need to make critical decisions. Her work includes designing and conducting research aimed at identifying effective education interventions that promise to improve student achievement and education outcomes. She has led large-scale, complex evaluations that use a range of research methodologies to assess the impact of policies and programs. Boulay also provides evaluation technical assistance to help increase local evaluators’ capacity to produce rigorous evidence of program effectiveness and implementation fidelity.

Jill Khadduri came to Abt Global in 2000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she was a career senior executive deeply involved in housing research and policies.She conducts research on homelessness and homeless-assistance programs and on housing programs and strategies, among them the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, Housing Choice Vouchers and public housing. She serves as a senior advisor to major research projects conducted by Abt’s housing practice, including studies that use experimental designs to measure the impacts of homebuyer counseling and of giving homeless families priority access to different types of housing and shelter programs. One of Abt’s senior fellows, she completed a history of HUD from its founding in 1965 through its 50th anniversary in 2015. She co-authored the book, In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What To Do About It, with Marybeth Shinn.

Hannah Betesh has over a decade of experience designing, managing, and conducting rigorous implementation and impact studies of interventions for low-income workers and families, including programs that address substance use disorder. Betesh’s methodological expertise is in measuring and documenting program implementation to support adoption of evidence-based practices. Her federal clients have included the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Lauren Olsho is a senior health economist and evaluator with expertise in random assignment, quasi-experimental evaluation methods, economic modeling methodology, and advanced statistical and econometric analysis.Olsho’s primary research interests are in health, nutrition and health behaviors in vulnerable populations – including the elderly, the poor, program participants, minorities, arrestees and at-risk youth.Olsho recently served as principal investigator on a cluster random assignment evaluation of the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality On-Time Falls Prevention Initiative, a clinical decision support intervention to reduce falls in long-term care settings.

Lauren Pittenger comes to Abt with more than 20 years of experience working in or as a consultant to federal government agencies. She has strong grounding in research and research-based consulting to government clients. She also has extensive experience leading and growing business, managing technical and scientific projects, and coaching and supporting account teams. She has served as a director at Guidehouse, scientific program manager at Booz Allen Hamilton, and lab manager at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network, the Gates Foundation and the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Natalie Matthews has over 15 years of experience in the field of homelessness, with a focus on direct service, system planning, database administration, and technical assistance and implementation (TA). Since joining Abt in 2009, Matthews has served in a variety of roles on its U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Compass TA cooperative agreements. She’s also worked on several locally and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)-funded TA projects, as well as research, monitoring and evaluation projects.  She served as the project director for the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) monitoring project, served on the evaluation team for HUD’s first evaluation of rapid re-housing programs for families (2012), and led the evaluation of Hartford Connecticut’s homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing program (2014).

Elizabeth Giardino’s evaluation and technical assistance work on housing, community development, asset building, and government innovation policies and programs promotes more equitable access to 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 community-based participatory research and incorporating equitable approaches into technical assistance engagements.

Meghan Henry is a social science researcher with over 15 years of experience in public policy and program evaluation, specifically in the fields of housing and homelessness and the intersection of homelessness and education. Henry has extensive experience leading evaluations, including large data collection efforts, conducting qualitative data collection, data analysis, and outcome evaluations. As project director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, she has considerable experience synthesizing large amounts of information to make the data accessible and actionable for federal, state, local, and philanthropic clients.

Sandra Wilson is an internationally known expert in research synthesis and meta-analysis. She has conducted systematic reviews of educational programs, most notably on school-based violence prevention and high school dropout programs.Prior to joining Abt, Wilson was the associate director of the Peabody Research Institute and a research assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Wilson led and supported research projects at the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology at Vanderbilt.