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Staff
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Neil Weiner
Director, Research Department
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3071
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Neil Weiner joined Vera in February 2007 as its research director. Neil had been at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 25 years, where he was a senior research investigator at the School of Social Policy and Practice. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Urban Systems Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He was senior research associate on the National Academy of Science's Panel on Understanding and Preventing Violent Behavior and was a visiting fellow at the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. Neil’s research interests include criminal and juvenile justice, social protection, justice and welfare, trajectories of individual violent-criminal careers, situations in which violence occurs and escalates, historical patterns in violent crime, the classification and management of risk, evaluation of juvenile justice and child-welfare programs and operations, disparities in death sentencing, criminological theory, public-policy formulation and evaluation, and research methods.
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Joel Miller
Director of Research, Center on Youth Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3167
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Prior to joining Vera in 2007, Joel Miller spent two years as a visiting professor of criminology at the University of Malaga, Spain, where he conducted research on racial profiling, crime prevention, and victimization, and taught criminology and social research methodology. From 2001 to 2005, he worked as a senior research associate at Vera, overseeing studies on juvenile delinquency recidivism, alternatives to placement, and police/community relations. Before joining Vera, Joel was the head researcher for police-community relations at the Home Office Research and Statistics Department in London. He holds a B.A. in human sciences from Oxford University, an M.Sc. in social research methods from Surrey University, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Surrey University.
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Nina Siulc
Director of Research, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3130
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After working as a supervision officer and researcher at Vera’s Appearance Assistance Program, Nina Siulc re-joined Vera in spring 2005. As director of research for the Center on Immigration and Justice, Nina has managed a national evaluation of the Legal Orientation Program, research on unaccompanied children, and design of a new data collection instrument to assess the extent of human trafficking in New York City. Nina previously worked on a number of interdisciplinary research projects on migration. As a Fulbright Scholar and fellow of the Social Science Research Council, she spent several years studying how Dominicans deported from the United States following criminal convictions reintegrate into Dominican society, and how Dominican law enforcement agencies respond to deportation. Nina holds graduate degrees in cultural anthropology and a certificate in culture and media from New York University.
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Jim Parsons
Director, Substance Use and Mental Health Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3043
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Jim Parsons joined Vera in March 2003 to work on the evaluation of Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT). Previously he worked at the Criminal Policy Research Unit in London evaluating a program offering services to offenders with dependency problems and multiple other needs. In the past his research has looked at the provision of harm reduction services, and especially needle exchange, to injecting drug users in the UK and studies of drug dealing markets. Jim has a B.A. in sociology from London Guildhall University and an M.Sc. in social research methods from the University of Surrey.
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Timothy Ross
Director, Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3139
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Timothy Ross directs the Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program. Dr. Ross is the principal investigator for the Clinical Trials Project, which examines issues related to the enrollment and monitoring of foster children in HIV/AIDS clinical trials—one of the largest research projects in Vera's history. From 2002 to 2006, he served as Vera's research director. Since coming to Vera in 1999, Tim has led Vera's child welfare research projects including studies of the overlap between child welfare and juvenile justice, the prevalence of children in foster care whose parents are incarcerated, and how the police and child protective workers coordinate responses to allegations of severe maltreatment. He has also edited a book on crime mapping and taught at Hunter and Baruch Colleges. He has undergraduate degrees in political science from Williams College and the University of Kent at Canterbury and a Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland.
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April (Hyo Eun) Bang
Research Associate, Substance Use and Mental Health Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3132
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April (Hyo Eun) Bang joined Vera in January 2008 to serve as a research associate for the International Justice Indicators Project and Substance Use and Mental Health Program. Previously she worked with HIV/AIDS communities in Africa and served as a government relations fellow at International Justice Mission. Prior to that, she worked for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Executive Session on Human Rights Commissions and Criminal Justice and co-authored a paper on the history and development of human rights commissions in the United States. April received her B.A. in economics from Smith College and her M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Before attending graduate school, she worked as an assistant economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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Matthew Barge
Research Analyst, PARC
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e-mail:
tel: (213) 797-1111
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Matthew Barge joined PARC in 2006 as a research analyst. Prior to PARC, Matthew worked at a nonpartisan political journalism web site, Factcheck.org, and at the Los Angeles office of Big Brothers Big Sisters, a national nonprofit serving at-risk youth. He holds a B.A. in government from Georgetown University.
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Zhifen Cheng
Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3175
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Zhifen Cheng joined Vera in January 2006 to work on several immigration and justice projects, including the evaluation of the Legal Orientation Program, the Human Trafficking project, and the Unaccompanied Children Project. She specializes in research design, statistical analysis, and program evaluation. Before coming to Vera, she worked in a large health facility in New York City, providing statistical analysis and doing measurement research in clinical psychology. She holds an M.A. in measurement, statistics, and evaluation and an M.A. in sociology. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in measurement, evaluation, and statistics at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Roohi Choudhry
Research Associate, Substance Use and Mental Health Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3103
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Roohi Choudhry joined Vera in May 2004 to work on a study of Section 8 voucher holders in New York City. Recently, she worked on a National Institute of Justice study measuring the effectiveness of probation. She is currently working on a study of mentally ill inmates at Rikers Island and is leading a tracking study of juveniles accessing the Administration for Children's Services Family Assessment Program. Previously, she worked at NOP World in San Francisco as senior research manager for a 30-country consumer survey. Roohi has a bachelor's degree in economics from Lahore University of Management Sciences and a master's degree in marketing research from the University of Texas at Arlington.
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Reagan Daly
Senior Research Associate, Center on Sentencing and Corrections
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-5206
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Reagan joined Vera in August 2007 as a senior research associate in the Center on Sentencing & Corrections. She received her B.A. in sociology from Franklin and Marshall and her Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Vera, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania where she worked on a number of projects, including the development of an evidence-based system of probation in Philadelphia and a randomized controlled trial testing the effect of restorative justice conferences in England. Her dissertation was a network analysis of 16,000 adjudicated juveniles in Philadelphia, and she has worked for the last five years on an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention-sponsored project to explain past trends and predict future trends in juvenile violence.
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Tania Farmiga
Research Analyst, Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3042
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Tania came to the Program on Child Welfare, Health, and Justice to work as part of the Clinical Trials Project in February 2005. Currently as a research analyst she coordinates the project's qualitative data analysis, specifically interviews with clinical trial participants and their caregivers. Prior to coming to Vera Tania worked for several years at the Center for Children and Families at Rutgers University as a research assistant primarily for the Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon HIV Health Services Planning Council. Tania has a B.A. in sociology from Rutgers University.
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Jennifer Fratello
Research Associate, Center on Youth Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3116
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Jennifer joined Vera in May 2006. She received her B.A. in psychology from The College of New Jersey and her M.A. in criminal justice from Temple University, where she is currently a doctoral student in criminal justice. At Temple, she worked as a research assistant on an outcome evaluation of Philadelphia’s juvenile justice programs. Her work has focused on gender issues in juvenile treatment, systematic trends, and quasi-experimental designs in program evaluation. Her dissertation will be a multilevel study of juvenile recidivism designed to assess both programmatic treatment effects and neighborhood effects on delinquency.
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Bruce Frederick
Senior Research Associate, Center on Sentencing and Corrections
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e-mail:
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Bruce joined Vera in March 2008 as a senior research associate in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections. He received his BA in psychology from Utica College and his PhD in educational psychology and statistics from the State University of New York at Albany. From 1981 through 2003, Bruce served as chief of the Bureau of Research and Evaluation at the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). From 2004 until just prior to joining Vera, he served as chief of the DCJS Offender Management Analysis Unit, supervising a group of researchers and policy analysts specializing in issues relating to criminal justice correctional programs. Prior to his career at DCJS, he also worked at the New York State Division for Youth, evaluating education programs for youth placed in state custody, and briefly at the New York State Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, assisting in the development of data systems for monitoring treatment programs. In the past few years, Bruce's research has focused on studies of the factors affecting recidivism among delinquent youth and adult offenders, development and validation of risk and needs assessment instruments, and a study examining how the effects of length of drug treatment and program completion vary with age, gender, and risk levels of the clients.
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Nicole Akai Hala
Senior Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3560
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Nicole Akai Hala joined Vera in March 2007 to work on the Human Trafficking Assessment Project. She recently earned her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she was an Andrew Wellington Cordier Fellow, teaching in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Prior to graduate school, Nicole worked in the fields of human rights, publishing, and journalism. Her research interests include transnational social processes and the impact of international institutions and nongovernmental organizations on national citizenship and minority policies.
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Nionne James-Pineda
Administrative Director, Research Department
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-4025
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Nionne James-Pineda joined Vera in April 2007 as the administrative director of research. Before coming to Vera, Nionne was the director of operations at the AIDS Service Center NYC (ASCNYC), a community-based nonprofit that provides services to people infected by HIV/AIDS or who are living with others infected by HIV/AIDS. While at ASCNYC, Nionne held a variety of positions with responsibilities that included data entry, executive assistance, human resources, database administration, data quality assurance and integrity monitoring, outcome evaluation, network administration, and facilities management. Nionne has had experience administering large and complex projects as the office manager for a National Institute of Mental Health study examining a cognitive-behavioral intervention for adolescents whose parents were HIV infected. Nionne earned a B.A. in sociology from Marymount Manhattan College.
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Michael Lens
Research Associate, Center on Youth Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3044
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Michael Lens joined Vera in July 2005 to work on youth justice issues. Previously he was director of planning and development at the Community Health Care Association of New York State and as a research specialist at the Texas Department of Health. He has also conducted research at the Poverty Research and Training Center, the Urban Institute, and the Minnesota Department of Education. Mike has a bachelor's degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a master's degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, where he concentrated on quantitative analysis and social policy. He will be pursuing his Ph.D. in Public Administration at New York University beginning fall 2005.
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Anne Lifflander
Senior Research Associate, Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3111
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Before joining Vera in September 2005, Anne Lifflander worked as a primary care physician in underserved communities in New York City and in Nicaragua. She was also director of research programs at the Women’s and Children’s Center of the Rollins School of Public Health. She received an M.D. in 1980 from SUNY Stony Brook and an MPH in 2001 from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
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Sydney McKinney
Research Analyst, Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-5207
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Sydney McKinney joined Vera in February 2007 to work on an evaluation of a program designed to improve outcomes for youth aging out of foster care. She earned her B.A. in American studies and history from Tufts University and will receive her master's in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University in May. Prior to working at Vera, Sydney conducted an evaluation of a youth violence prevention program targeting adolescent girls. She also co-founded a nonprofit organization committed to promoting an equitable recovery of the Gulf Coast region post Hurricane Katrina.
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Camelia Naguib
Research Associate, PARC
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e-mail:
tel: (213) 797-1102
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Camelia Naguib joined PARC as a research associate in 2006. She holds a B.A. in politics from Oberlin College and a Master of Public Policy from the UCLA School of Public Affairs, where she concentrated in the area of crime and drug control policy. While at UCLA, she worked to improve the release process at the Los Angeles County Jail. Prior to graduate school, Camelia served as assistant program director at Milestones, a residential multi-service center for state and county parolees. She has also worked as an evaluator for the UCLA School Management Program.
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Carla Roa
Research Analyst, Center on Sentencing and Corrections
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3060
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Carla Roa joined Vera in March 2006 to work on the Clinical Trials project in the Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program before starting work in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections in January 2008. Carla previously externed at Assisted Outpatient Treatment/Kendra’s Law and worked with mentally ill clients. She earned her B.A. from Rutgers University and her M.A. in forensic psychology from John Jay College.
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Christine Scott-Hayward
Research Associate, Center on Sentencing and Corrections
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3053
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Christine Scott-Hayward joined Vera in August 2006 as a research analyst for the Center on Sentencing and Corrections. She received an undergraduate degree in law from University College Dublin in Ireland and an M.A. in social science from the University of Chicago. She is also a member of the New York Bar. Christine previously worked for Vera as an intern on the Fragmentation and Ferment project. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at New York University’s Institute for Law and Society, focusing on desistance from crime.
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Arnold Son
Research Associate, Center on Immigration and Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3051
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Arnold Son joined Vera in January 2006 after completing his coursework for an M.S. in urban policy at Milano New School for Management and Urban Policy. While pursuing his master’s degree, he worked as a research associate for the Community Development Research Center at the New School University, performing both qualitative and quantitative analyses. He also worked with the New York City Charter Revision Commission, evaluating the City’s system of reporting against national standards of good governance in order to offer suggestions for improvement. Arnold received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Colgate University in 2002.
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Naomi Sugie
Research Analyst, Substance Use and Mental Health Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3069
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Naomi Sugie joined Vera in April 2005 to work on a project examining cooperation between local law enforcement and Arab-American communities across the country. She previously worked for the Center for Global Partnership’s grassroots exchange and education programs at the Japan Foundation, as well as for the Institute for Children and Poverty (ICP). As a research associate at ICP, she studied family homelessness and is coauthor of a book profiling mothers living in New York City shelters. Naomi holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Columbia University.
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Lucia Trimbur
Andrew W. Mellow Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Department
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3037
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Lucia Trimbur is the seventh Andrew W. Mellon Fellow on Race, Crime, and Justice and joined Vera in August 2006 after completing her Ph.D. in sociology and African American studies at Yale University. She holds a B.A. in human ecology and American civilization from Brown University and an M.A. from the University of London in culture, communication, and societies. Her dissertation, “Living Wages: The Work of Amateur Fighters and Trainers in Postindustrial Brooklyn,” examines the opportunities for work, identity, and fictive kinship that the urban boxing gym offers men of color, many of whom have histories of crime and forced confinement. At Vera, Lucia will be preparing her dissertation for publication and starting a new research project that focuses on the racialized nature of prisoner reentry.
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Kaya Williams
Research Assistant, Substance Use and Mental Health Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3173
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Kaya joined Vera in November 2007 as a research assistant for the Substance Use and Mental Health program. She graduated from Harvard College, where she received her A.B. in social anthropology with a focus on human rights and social justice. Prior to joining Vera, she was an intern at the National Black MBA Association, and she spent the past year researching for and writing her senior thesis on women in Peru’s Shining Path.
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Colin Worrall
Research Analyst, Center on Youth Justice
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3058
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Colin joined Vera in January 2008. He earned his B.A. from the University of Delaware, majoring in criminal justice and history, and he earned his M.A. in criminal justice from George Washington University in 2007. While at George Washington University, he worked as a graduate teaching assistant for a number of criminal justice classes. His master'ss thesis examined college students’ perceptions of justified violence in relation to their sports media consumption.
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Allon Yaroni
Research Associate, Child Welfare, Health, and Justice Program
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e-mail:
tel: (212) 376-3162
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Allon joined Vera in March 2007 to work on the Academy program evaluation and the Clinical Trials Project. Prior to joining Vera, he worked at the Furman Center for Urban Policy and Real Estate on research examining the impact of subsidized housing on nearby property values and as a lecturer teaching master-level courses at New York University. Before immigrating to the U.S., Allon served as assistant to the civil service commissioner for the prime minister’s office, Israel, leading organizational change efforts. He has published several academic articles on issues related to organizational change and administrative reforms. Allon is currently a doctoral candidate the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, specializing in urban policy and research methods. Allon holds a B.A. in economics and statistics, an M.A. in public policy from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and an M.Phil. in public administration from New York University.
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