Public Affairs Fellowship is sponsored by Howard J. Samuels State and City Policy Center at Baruch College. Supports exceptional public affairs scholars and practitioners for research on state and local government issues and policies.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College CUNY Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY Professor of Political Science Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia Department of Political Science and Law, Montclair State University, New Jersey School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University, Newark Dept of Political Science, Baruch College Read Bio Professor Carolyn Abott specializes in U.S. state and local politics and public policy.

She is particularly interested in the politics of public finance. Much of her work focuses on the political causes and consequences of fiscal decisions and the link between democratic accountability and financial sustainability.

Professor Abott’s research interests are directly tied to a concern for the material well-being of those in the United States who are most vulnerable to economic distress, and the impact that differences in governmental resources can have on various types of inequality.

Professor Abott’s research has been published in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, and Public Administration Review and has a forthcoming book about the politics of public pensions. She received her Ph. D.

in politics and social policy from Princeton University. Department of Urban Policy and Planning Read Bio Jenna Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Policy and Planning. Her research investigates how zoning regulations shape urban development and impact housing inequalities in the United States.

She also investigates the political economy of zoning reform. In her scholarly work, she uses mixed methods approaches, leveraging big data, geographic information systems, and qualitative methods. Her work previously has been published in journals such as the Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning Education and Research, City & Community, and Land Use Policy.

Previously, Jenna was a visiting faculty member in the Urban Studies program at Barnard College and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to academia, Davis was a Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness, where she conducted research on the educational outcomes of unhoused students enrolled in the New York City public school system. Jenna also worked at the Citizens Budget Commission, performing research on property tax reform in New York City, and worked in marketing and operations at a real estate technology startup.

Marxe School of Public and International Affairs Read Bio Dr. Hernandez teaches introductory and advanced public and nonprofit management courses, and he draws from his extensive experiences in government agencies, from executive leadership and management to front-line roles. From 2002 to 2010, he served as the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice.

He led approximately 1,000 staff, administered an overall budget of more than $100 million, and managed over 15 detention facilities and group homes for youth in family and criminal court proceedings. Before the Marxe School, he served as an asylum officer at US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) between 2017 and 2019.

He adjudicated over 450 applications of people from all parts of the world who sought refuge in the United States. Associate Professor in Public Administration University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy Read Bio Gang Chen is an Associate Professor in Public Administration at the University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy.

He co-founded and co-directs the State and Local Government Finance Project (SLGF) at the Center for Policy Research at Rockefeller College. As a Public Administration scholar specializing in public budgeting, finance, and financial management, Dr. Chen’s research is dedicated to addressing a variety of critical and pressing financial management challenges currently facing governments.

Dr. Chen’s work has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), Public Management Review (PMR), American Review of Public Administration (ARPA), Public Budgeting & Finance (PBF), Administration & Society (A&S), Journal of Pension Economics and Finance (JPEF), Public Finance Review (PFR), Local Government Studies (LGS), Public Money and Management (PMM), and Public Performance and Management Review (PPMR).

He has obtained research grants and served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) in research projects funded by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), Society of Actuaries (SOA), the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the Equable Institute, the Crane Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Associate Professor of Political Science Fordham University, Lincoln Center (Manhattan) campus Read Bio Christina Greer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, Lincoln Center (Manhattan) campus. Her research and teaching focus on American politics, Black ethnic politics, campaigns and elections, and public opinion.

She is the author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream and co-editor of Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification. Greer writes a weekly column for The Amsterdam News, and is a frequent political commentator on several media outlets. She is the co-host of the New York centered podcast FAQ-NYC and host of the podcast quiz show The Blackest Questions at thegrio.

com. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University Read Bio Can Chen is an Associate Professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and Director of the Ph. D.

Programs in Public Policy. He is the founder and director of the Infrastructure Finance & Policy Lab. His research focuses on infrastructure finance, fiscal transparency, budgeting, and public financial management, with methodological expertise in causal inference and computational social science.

He is the author of Innovative Infrastructure Finance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), has published nearly 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and received research grants from the Volcker Alliance, the World Bank, GASB, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Clinical Assistant Professor of American Politics Read Bio A scholar of American and Urban Politics, Laura uses quantitative methods to study political persuasion in the context of race and ethnicity. Informed by her two decades of experience working on the frontlines of political campaigns, her research examines the effects of campaign contact on election results.

An expert on New York City politics, Laura has coauthored reports on the implementation of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and voter turnout. Her writing has been published by the New York Daily News, City & State, US News and World Report, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and Vital City. She frequently appears on television outlets such as Spectrum News (NY 1), NBC News 4 and FoxNOW.

She completed her Ph. D. in Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center, earned a Master of Arts degree from Oxford University in England and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Georgia.

Binghamton University, State University of New York Read Bio Komla Dzigbede is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and served as Department Chair from 2022 to 2025.

His research focuses on public finance and international economic policy, with particular attention to state and local government finance, debt management, tax policy, fiscal resilience to climate risks, and sustainable economic development. His work informs policy discussions at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Dr. Dzigbede has extensive experience in the international public sector, including prior work as an economist at the Central Bank of Ghana and consulting work in international development. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Ghana and a PhD in public policy from Georgia State University. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Public Finance & Management.

PhD candidate in American Studies School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University – Newark Read Bio Ying Liu is a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University – Newark. Her research interests include public and nonprofit management, social equity, human resource management, local government, and citizen-government interactions.

Dedicated to integrating gender issues into public and nonprofit administration, she is currently examining women’s representation, gender-responsive budgeting, and women’s nonprofit organizations.

Her dissertation, Hidden Figures: Four Essays on Women’s Representation and Its Bureaucratic Outcomes, explores the relationship between women’s representation and bureaucratic outcomes across four areas: human resource practices, organizational performance and responsiveness, local government spending, and citizen-government interactions.

The dissertation not only highlights the critical role gender plays in public administration but also offers practical implications for increasing women’s representation in public organizations, particularly in leadership positions and local government. Ph. D.

Candidate in Public Administration and Policy Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, SUNY Read Bio Battulga Buyannemekh is a Ph. D. Candidate in Public Administration and Policy at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York.

He holds an M. P. A.

from the University of Southern California and an M. B. A.

from San Jose State University. His research interests include but are not limited to social innovation, digital transformation in and of local governments, smart cities, and strategic information technology management. Some of his research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Government Information Quarterly, Sustainability, and Public Policy and Administration.

He has also presented and published his research in proceedings of conferences such as the Annual Conference of the International Research Society for Public Management and the International Conference on Digital Government Research.

PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science City University of New York Read Bio Andrés Besserer Rayas’s dissertation analyzes how and when states provide documentation to undocumented immigrants, and how such documentation, or lack of it, affects them and their families.

Using multi-sited ethnographic and comparative analysis, he studies Colombia as a paradigm of inclusionary policies towards immigrants, in contrast to the United States. His publicly engaged scholarship in the US includes research to protect DACA, advance immigrant rights and health post-Covid-19, driver’s licenses for the undocumented, among other topics.

In Colombia, his research on the effects of statelessness was used in a ruling by the country’s highest court that protected plaintiff’s rights, and publicized the issue. He received ESS’s 2023 pre-tenure publicly engaged sociology award. His research has been published in Sociological Forum; The Journal on Migration and Human Security; Territory, Politics, Governance; among others.

He has an MSc from University College London and a BA from El Colegio de México.

PhD Student, Social Science Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York The Graduate Center, City University of New York PhD Student, Public Administration Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy University at Albany, SUNY PhD Candidate in Environmental Psychology The Graduate Center, CUNY Read Bio Jakob Kendall Schneider is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the Senior Program Manager for Research & Policy at the East New York Community Land Trust.

Using participatory, community-led research, his dissertation examines how grassroots organizing to further community ownership influences policy development at the local and state levels. Jakob’s research has focused on community land trusts for more than a decade.

He has published in academic journals, including Housing Policy Debate, Housing Studies, and Antipode, and contributed to the edited volume, Neighborhood Change and Neighborhood Action: The Struggle to Create Neighborhoods that Serve Human Needs. He holds a degree in Urban Sociology from Northeastern Illinois University and a Master of City and Regional Planning from The Edward J.

Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.