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Matthew Sweeney leads business development and account management for Abt’s portfolio of work at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). With more than 20 years of healthcare experience partnering with federal agencies, small businesses, and the private sector, Sweeney has led large research and operational projects focused on various dimensions of alternative payment models, including:  implementing and validating quality measures, program support for hospital pay-for-performance programs, and advising clients on the design and refinement of their value-based purchasing arrangements.

Dr. Matthew Finster is a principal researcher with 15 years of experience working in education and educational policy research. His expertise lies in providing technical assistance on educational research and program implementation, which often focuses on improving educator effectiveness and student outcomes. He has significant experience working with federal education grantees, state education agencies, local education agencies, and schools on building their capacity to implement their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans. He is also the author of numerous articles and technical reports centered around education and human capital management that have appeared in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Journal of Education Human Resources, and other notable publications.

Benny Kil is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a certified scrum master (CSM) with over 15 years of project and product management experience—working in business analysis and project delivery in the federal, state, and commercial areas with a focus on technology and digital processes. He has experience in leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver client requirements using agile methodologies (scrum and kanban). He is an experienced leader who can provide IT project and portfolio management oversight through the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), including client management, business requirements elicitation, IT software development, quality assurance (QA)/quality control (QC), testing, and deployment. Kil has led projects with a variety of federal clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Liam Ristow is a mixed methods evaluator with 20+ years of evaluation experience in the areas of K-12 and postsecondary education, services for disconnected youth, and community-level change initiatives addressing health and homelessness. He has extensive experience designing and conducting complex multi-year implementation and outcome evaluations for clients at the federal, state and local levels. Ristow brings particular expertise in design of data collection protocols, qualitative data collection and analysis, and development of relevant, actionable evaluation reports.

Matthew Trombley has a Ph.D. in economics with concentrations in health and applied econometric methods. He has extensive experience designing and conducting evaluations for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), including analyses of historically underserved populations.

Dr. Kerry Hofer has almost 20 years of experience conducting rigorous research in early childhood settings. Dr. Hofer has in-depth knowledge of large-scale childcare programs, including public state-run prekindergarten programs and Head Start/Early Head Start, as well as more informal care settings.  She has worked with early educational programs and staff across the country.  Dr. Hofer has been a key member on several large-scale projects funded by organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health, primarily focusing on analytic techniques with quantitative data. The majority of her research involves rigorous quantitative evaluations of early educational programs and practices targeted at children from impoverished families, focusing on program impact and model delivery.

Alexandra Nastase is the Chief Technical Director, based in London. She has more than 15 years of experience in design, implementation, and evaluation of large reform and technical assistance programs to improve public sector performance and strengthen civil society.Nastase has held leadership and senior advisory roles for multi-million technical assistance programs funded by World Bank, European Commission, World Food Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, United Nations Development Program, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO).

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).

Rosa Amboage is an environmental economist with 10 years of experience expanding markets for nature-based solutions (NbS) to achieve climate, economic and social progress. Working across academic, private, and public sectors, her expertise includes land use policy, NbS, environmental markets, green finance, and natural resource management.Amboage contributed to the UK’s post-Brexit agri-environmental policies and designed its first national scheme promoting a natural capital approach to economic and climate goals. Before Abt, she was the lead economist of the £640M GBP ($740M USD) Nature for Climate Fund, a national program to help industries and communities realize net-zero ambitions.

Lindsey Freeze has worked in external affairs for nearly 20 years, leading brand, editorial, and advocacy strategies for global development organizations. She has produced multimedia coverage of health barriers and innovations in more than 30 countries. Her work with photojournalists, filmmakers, and issue experts has won awards and led to coverage in such news outlets as The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, the BBC, The Telegraph, Devex, and other media worldwide.