Founding Editor: Barbara Ehrenreich, acclaimed journalist, author and Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, has worked with her IPS colleagues to synthesize and catalyze a broad consensus among working journalists, community organizers, service providers and policy analysts: the U.S. public and its policymakers need help confronting and addressing the scope and depth of economic hardship in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008 and its continuing reverberations. Her leadership role in EHRP is twofold. She is writing big picture analytic pieces that remind us of the basics that the national conversation often ignores. Barbara is also working closely with other Project contributors as they develop and research their stories.
Co-Editor: Gary Rivlin has a rich background covering big-city politics and economic hardship. Early in his career, when he covered Harold Washington’s Chicago, Studs Terkel said of him, “He was to the Chicago political scene what I.F. Stone was to the national picture.” James Surowecki called Gary’s most recent book, Broke USA, a “blistering new investigation of the subprime economy.” Gary is not only working on stories for the EHRP but helping journalists develop their pieces and working with outlets to place them.
Project Director: Karen Dolan, Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies. Karen holds an M.A. With Highest Distinction in Philosophy and Social Policy from the American University in Washington D.C. Karen joined IPS in 1996; Karen’s public scholarship and activism at IPS has linked community-led organizations with policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. The focus of her work is on local democracy/empowerment, anti-poverty and peace. Some of Karen’s publications include: Our Communities are Not for Sale; Paying the Price: the Mounting Costs of War in Iraq, Unleash Democracy in Mandate for Change, and Foreign Policy Goes Local. Karen blogs for Huffington Post and other media outlets. Karen serves on the boards of: The Liberty Tree Foundation, The Participatory Budgeting Project and Jobs With Justice Worker Rights Board.
Other key team members over the past 18 months:
- Hollie Ainbinder has generously shared with the project her strategic savvy and rich experience in developing media projects.
- Brian Cruikshank (Brian’s Web Studio) built the website you see and is making it better every day.
- Linda Jue and her G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism spent many months helping the team design and fundraise for the project, recruit journalists, and build essential infrastructure.
- Susan Mernit has guided the team through the planning process for the website and social media infrastructure.
- Eric Cheng was an EHRP & IPS intern. A Canadian, he is a rising senior at Georgetown University majoring in government and philosophy and minoring in music. Eric contributed much in getting the site and social media aspects off the ground.
