Roosevelt Institute Welcomes New Class of Winter 2025 Fellows

New York, NY—Today, the Roosevelt Institute announced its winter 2025 cohort of think tank fellows—a distinguished group of experts dedicated to rebalancing power in the economy and democracy. Throughout their fellowships, this dynamic group will explore a range of issues, including the US tax system, the care economy, and the housing crisis. Together, they will make the case for why, now more than ever, we need a vision for a truly democratic economy that can only be delivered through robust, progressive public institutions. 

“The Roosevelt Institute is committed to putting forward policy ideas that stand against the current chaos in our governing institutions and the status quo that got us here in the first place. We all deserve a more equitable economy, and we will offer positive visions of what government can be for the American people,” said Hannah Groch-Begley, director of Roosevelt’s think tank. “The insights from this cohort will be vital in advancing policies that challenge entrenched power and promote a more just, democratic society, no matter how long the fight may take.”

Introducing the 2025 winter Roosevelt fellows:  

Jessica Calarco is a sociologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024). Her award-winning research examines the intersections of policy, privilege, and power, with a focus on education and family life. Her previous books include Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research (with Mario Small; University of California Press, 2022), Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018), and A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (Princeton University Press, 2020). Calarco has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and CNN. She also writes the Hidden Curriculum newsletter.

Sarah Jane (SJ) Glynn most recently served in the Biden-Harris administration as chief economist at the Department of Labor. She is an expert on economic issues impacting working families, workplace benefits such as paid family and medical leave and paid sick days, the gender and racial wage gap, occupational segregation, and the care economy. Glynn has testified before the US Congress, state legislatures, and local government bodies on issues related to families’ economic security and has developed policy proposals and provided technical assistance to elected officials across all levels of government. She is a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance and previously held the position of director of women’s economic policy at the Center for American Progress. Glynn received her PhD in sociology from Vanderbilt University and her BA in women’s studies with a concentration in LGBTQ Studies from UCLA.

Brian Galle is a professor of law at Georgetown Law and recently served as a senior fellow at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance. He also served as a research fellow in the IRS Joint Statistical Research Program and the UC Irvine Student Loan Law Initiative. Galle’s research and teaching interests include taxation, nonprofit organizations, behavioral law and economics, federalism, and public finance economics. He practiced for three years as an attorney in the Criminal Appeals and Tax Enforcement Policy Section of the US Department of Justice’s Tax Division and was a visiting fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Jamie Keene served as special assistant to the president for equality and opportunity in the Biden-Harris White House, where her portfolio covered a wide range of domestic issues including strengthening federal anti-poverty programs, advancing civil rights, securing LGBTQI+ equality, and addressing domestic violent extremism and white supremacy. She was one of the architects and implementers of the administration’s historic executive order on racial equity. Keene has been an advisor on presidential transitions and campaigns on a range of policy issues. She also served in local government, working for the cities of Los Angeles and Washington, DC, where she built stronger services for families experiencing deep poverty and homelessness.

Rachel Rebouché is the Kean Family dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the Peter J. Liacouras professor of law. Rebouché is a leading scholar in reproductive health law, contracts, and family law. She is coauthor of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field as well as Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten. She has served as a coinvestigator on two grant-funded research projects related to reproductive health, one housed at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and another funded by the World Health Organization. Rebouché received a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Queen’s University Belfast, and a BA from Trinity University.

Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at the New Republic and a columnist at the Guardian. He is a former staff writer at the New Republic, the New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, Harper’s Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, and Gawker. His first book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, will be published by Random House in August 2025. Nwanevu is a former editor in chief of the South Side Weekly, a Chicago alternative newspaper. He is a graduate of the College at the University of Chicago and the Harris School of Public Policy.

Ned Resnikoff is the policy director for California YIMBY (“Yes in My Backyard”), a nonprofit advocacy organization working to end California’s housing crisis through changes to state land use law. He previously worked as policy manager for the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco and as a fiscal and policy analyst for the California state legislature. He is also a former journalist, with bylines in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, MSNBC, Business Insider, the Nation, the New Republic, and Dissent, among other publications. Resnikoff is currently working on a book about cities for Island Press, with an expected release date in fall 2026. He holds a master’s in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Regina Seo is a lead economist at the Research and Innovation for Social and Economic Inclusion (RISEI) Lab at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on labor market and health outcomes for marginalized populations, as well as the impact of social policies. Before joining Northwestern, Seo held roles at the Brookings Institution and the World Bank. She holds a PhD in economics from American University, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Emory University.

Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana is an assistant professor of sociology at SUNY Albany. Her research focuses on understanding persistent sites of racial inequality including the racial wealth gap, gentrification, and media representations of social problems. She applies the quantitative and spatial data analysis skills she learned in her undergraduate and graduate studies and the qualitative data analysis skills she learned in eight years of evaluation research work at MDRC and the Community College Research Center at Teachers College in her research today. Her work on the racial wealth gap has appeared in Sociological Inquiry and the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, and she coauthored a report on Black women’s wealth published by Urban Institute. Rucks-Ahidiana holds an MPA and a BS in environmental science and policy and a PhD in sociology.

Isabella Weber is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate in research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University. Her first book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate, is the winner of numerous academic awards and has been translated into several languages. Her second book, on the role of essential sectors for economic stability, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press as well as for seven translations. Weber has become a leading voice on policy responses to inflation and has advised policymakers in the United States and Germany on questions of price stabilization. For her public policy work, she has been profiled in the New Yorker and recognized as one of TIME100 Next, Bloomberg’s 50 Ones to Watch, Germany’s 100 women of 2022, and Capital 40 under 40 lists. She holds a PhD in development studies from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research. 

Miranda Yaver is an assistant professor of health policy and management, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches courses at the intersection of health policy and politics, and her research emphasizes health insurance barriers and inequities, as well as the politics of health reform in the US. Her book Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026) is about how health insurance coverage denials worsen health and economic inequities through the imposition of administrative burden. She received her PhD in political science from Columbia University, after which she did postdoctoral research in health policy and management at UCLA.

“At Roosevelt, we are committed to building an economic vision that the American people can believe in, one that rejects oligarchy and is rooted in a belief in democracy and a shared future,”  said Suzanne Kahn, senior vice president of Roosevelt’s think tank. “We are excited to bring on board fellows with a wide range of expertise, diverse perspectives, and a shared commitment to fight for that vision even in today’s challenging political landscape.”