Troy Wittek

Troy Wittek is a Senior Economist at Inforum. Troy received an MBA at the University of Baltimore in 2020 and a masters degree in Applied Information Technology from Towson University in 2012. He joined Inforum in 2006 and became a full-time Research Assistant in 2009. Troy’s responsibilities include collecting and analyzing detailed industry data for use in policy analysis, business planning, and academic research. He helps produce reports for a variety of audiences in the academic, government, and private sector.

Mark Hutson

Dr. Mark Hutson is an applied economist who specializes in forecasting and predictive analytics. Dr. Hutson currently serves as the manager of the Modeling, Statistics, and Data Science Group at Summit Consulting, LLC, where he oversees technical staff who specialize in econometrics, data visualization, and data analytics. In this role, Dr. Hutson will lead teams of researchers developing empirical answers to policy questions, often presenting to a variety of audiences including executives and technical staff.

Dr. Hutson’s work specializing in simulation, policy forecasting, and forecast evaluation. Using a variety of modeling tools, Dr. Hutson has had numerous engagements building, validating, verifying, and auditing complex modeling systems, as well as extensive work leading specialized teams in exploratory data analysis and predictive analytics for several government clients. Dr. Hutson has built, operated, and upgraded several models, including using machine learning techniques and more traditional structural approaches.

Dr. Hutson holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Washington University. His dissertation was titled “Three Essays on Macroeconomic Forecasting”, including a publication in the journal Economic Modelling.

Desiree Maruca

Desiree Maruca is the Associate Director at the Group of Thirty, an independent global body comprised of economic and financial leaders from the public and private sectors and academia. In this position, she heads various aspects of the organization’s program development, event planning, and fundraising, as well as coordinates the study groups and publications of the members. Desiree earned her Master of Arts in International Relations with a concentration in Global Business and Transatlantic Trade from The School of International Service at The American University in Washington, DC. She also holds a BA in International Studies from American University, studying abroad in Brussels, Belgium, and concentrating her work on the European Union. Last year she served as a Vice-President for Programming for The National Economists Club.

Daniel Bachman

Danny Bachman is responsible for Deloitte’s quarterly U.S. Economic Forecast. Prior to coming to Deloitte, Dr. Bachman worked as a forecaster, economic analyst, and model expert at the US Commerce Department and for several economic consulting companies. He also taught economics at Temple University. Dr. Bachman’s first professional job was at Israel’s Ministry of Finance.

Dr. Bachman is a participant in the Wall Street Journal’s Economic Forecasting panel and the George Washington University’s H.O. Stekler Research Seminar on Forecasting. He is an active member of the National Association for Business Economics and the National Economics Club. Dr. Bachman has published a number of articles in peer reviewed economics research journals.

Dr. Bachman is a native of Philadelphia. He has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins and Ph.D. from Brown University. Dr. Bachman lives in Rockville, Maryland with his wife, but without his two millennial children, who—evidently defying the odds—have not returned home after college. Yet.

Amira Alghumgham

Dr. Amira Alghumgham is an Economist specialized in Fiscal & Tax policy. Dr. Alghumgham is currently a fiscal and tax policy consultant at the World Bank Group. Provides advisory services & analytics for governments & international organization around the world as part of the Global Tax Team.

Prior to working at the World Bank, Dr. Alghumgham was an affiliate researcher from 2015- 2019 at the Office of Revenue Analysis conducting research projects to explain and understand economic and fiscal trends in the District of Columbia. Also, analyzed public policy issues that is on interest to the District policymakers.

One of the papers Dr. Alghumgham produced, “Do Publicly subsidized Economic Development Projects Help their Neighborhoods to Grow Faster?”, using a differences-in-differences model, examines whether income and property values grew faster in DC neighborhoods with public investment than in comparable neighborhoods without public investments. This paper was well-received by her academic peers as well as public policy practitioners and won an award from the Economic Club of Washington DC, an influential civic organization focused on maintaining a vibrant business environment in the Washington, DC area.

Dr. Alghumgham, taught at undergraduate economics classes as an adjunct professor at Howard University and Bowie State University in 2018.  Dr. Alghumgham earned her Ph.D in Economics from Howard University in (2019), M.S. in Industrial Engineering in (2013) and M.A. in Economics in (2011) from New Mexico State University, and B.S in Economics in (2002) from King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia.

Freddie Wootton

Board of Governors

Freddie has been in DC since September 2017 covering the US economy and fiscal policy at the British Embassy. Freddie is on secondment from HM Treasury, where he most recently worked on the G20 and G7. He studied politics at the University of Exeter.

Aparna Mathur

Board of Governors

Aparna Mathur is a Senior Research Manager in Economics at Amazon and a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. At Amazon, she tracks and conducts research to help identify labor and employment related challenges faced by Amazon’s domestic and global workforce, with a view to informing best policy. At the Kennedy School she is focusing on the COVID-19 safety net response. Prior to Amazon, she spent a year as a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. She joined the Council as part of the COVID-19 response task force at the peak of the crisis in April 2020 and worked with epidemiologists on the health aspects of the crisis, while also tracking the economic downturn that came with the lockdowns. Prior to joining CEA, she was a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. At AEI, she directed the AEI-Brookings Project on Paid Family and Medical Leave, building bipartisan momentum on paid leave, for which she was recognized in the Politico 50 list for 2017. Her academic research has focused on income inequality and mobility, tax policy, labor markets and small businesses. She has published in several top scholarly journals including the Journal of Public Economics, the National Tax Journal and the Journal of Health Economics, testified several times before Congress and published numerous articles in the popular press on issues of policy relevance, including on her own blog at Forbes. Her work has been cited in leading news magazines such as the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She has regularly provided commentary on prominent radio and television shows such as NPR’s Marketplace and the Diane Rehm Show, as well as CNBC and C-SPAN. She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005, and is currently serving on the University of Maryland Economics Leadership Council. She is also on the Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance, Simply Green as well as the National Economists Club.

Christopher Hooton

Board of Governors

Christopher Hooton, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at Facebook where he works on digital economy and public policy issues. Dr. Hooton also serves as a Senior Scholar (non-resident) at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy.

Dr. Hooton is an authority on the digital economy, economic development, and public policy and publishes across a variety of media. His work has been featured in leading news publications such as New York Times, Financial Times, and TechCrunch. Prior to joining Facebook, he was the founding Chief Economist & Head of Research at Internet Association, a global trade body for the internet sector. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as other leading international organizations, and as a Lecturer on policy evaluation and evaluation research at the Social Science Research Methods Centre of the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Hooton earned his Ph.D. without revision from the University of Cambridge (St John’s College) where he also served as the Captain of the university boxing team. He received his MSc with distinction from the London School of Economics, and his BA summa cum laude from University of Miami.

Dr. Hooton is also a published and award winning fiction author.

 

 

Danielle Hale

Board Member

As Chief Economist at realtor.com® Danielle is responsible for developing and translating real estate trend data into consumer and industry insights. She also leads realtor.com®’s team of the industry’s top analysts and economists with the goal of providing deeper and broader housing insights to people throughout the home journey, as well as industry professionals and thought leaders. Before joining realtor.com® in July 2017, Danielle spent nearly a decade as an economist and policy researcher at the National Association of REALTORS®. As managing director of housing research, Danielle oversaw the production of closely followed housing market data, including NAR’s monthly pending and existing home sales indices and quarterly home price reports. Danielle previously served as manager of tax policy research, leading research projects on topics including how federal, state and local policies impact the real estate market.Prior to joining NAR as an economist in 2008, Danielle spent three years at the American Enterprise Institute, where she produced research and managed its executive office’s communications. Her work during that time included research contributions to Dr. Allan Meltzer’s A History of the Federal Reserve, Volume II (University of Chicago Press, 2010).  Danielle earned her degrees from Florida State University and calls the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC home.  Her previous work with the National Economists Club includes serving on year as the Vice President of Rapporteurs and participating in the Kakehashi Project.

Michael Chow

Ex Officio, Board of Governors

Michael was recently Research Director for the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Venture Forward, splitting his time between the two organizations and focusing on producing leading edge research that investigated the role and impact of venture capital on the economy. He also managed the production of the NVCA Yearbook and quarterly PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, the industry’s leading trade publications, and advised the NVCA policy team on key issues. Before working at NVCA and Venture Forward, Michael was Lead Data Analyst and Economist at the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s leading small business trade association, where he directed the organization’s cost-benefit analysis program and led research projects focused on finance, tax, health care, labor, and regulatory policy. He has previously worked for the Office of Economic Policy and Analysis at the Department of Labor and for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in the White House.

In recent years, Michael has Chaired or Co-Chaired the Small Business Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), the nation’s premier professional association for business economists. Michael has also served as past president and chair for the National Economists Club (NEC), a non-profit, nonpartisan professional organization founded in 1968 comprised of leading economists based in Washington, DC. He is the recipient of the NABE Abramson Scroll and the NABE Contributed Paper Award, both awarded by NABE for outstanding papers in the field of business economics.

In his spare time, Michael contributes his energy to a variety of volunteer activities which currently include serving on the Board of Trustees of the Treatment and Learning Centers, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to annually serving 2,000 individuals with special needs in the DC/MD/VA area, the Board of Advisors of the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton, and the NEC’s Board of Governors.

Michael received an M.A. in Applied Economics from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.Sc. in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, and a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.