The staff of the Workforce Development Strategies Group has extensive policy, programmatic and technical expertise. It includes former senior workforce officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, the chief legislative architect of the Welfare to Work Act of 1997 and the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, and a team of experts with years of experience operating workforce development programs. Together they are uniquely qualified to provide local, state and federal workforce officials with state-of-the art strategic planning, systems development and capacity-building tools.
Ray Uhalde is Director of the Workforce Development Strategies Group. He served as a senior executive in the U.S. Department of Labor for over 15 years. During that tenure he served as acting head and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the department's Employment Training Administration, as a principal advisor to the Secretary of Labor and chief public spokesperson on all employment and training matters, and as the leader of the department's efforts to enact the Welfare to Work Act of 1997 and the Workforce Investment Act of 1998.
Contact: ruhalde@ncee.org
Tim Barnicle is Senior Advisor and former Director of the Workforce Development Strategies Group. Before joining the Workforce Development Strategies Group, he servied as a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy and for Employment and Training. He has served as the Boston regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Training Administration. He also has extensive experience as a legislative expert in the U.S. Congress.
Contact: tbarnicle@ncee.org
Betsy Brown Ruzzi is the Associate Director of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce at the National Center on Education and the Economy. Ms. Brown Ruzzi managed the Commission's international benchmarking effort and oversaw the commissioning of over a dozen papers that provided background information to the Commission during its deliberations. Ms. Brown Ruzzi also authored reports on international systems of early childhood education, student testing, teachers, education ministries, and country studies of Finland and India and directed the Commission's communications and public outreach efforts. Ms. Brown Ruzzi also works with the US Department of Labor as it develops new policy and programming, particularly focused on standards-based curriculum and instruction for young people who have dropped out of school and are participating in alternative education programs. Betsy recently returned to NCEE after serving as Vice President of Touchstones, a company that develops and distributes critical thinking and problem solving curriculum. During her career at the National Center she helped create the National Institute for School Leadership, the National Skill Standards Board, the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, the High Skills State Consortium, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, all initiatives to improve the academic performance of our nation's students and strengthen the skills of our workforce. Prior to joining the National Center, Betsy worked on Capitol Hill.
Contact: bbrownruzzi@ncee.org
Mary Gardner Clagett is Deputy Director for Policy. Ms. Clagett previously served as the lead staff assistant to the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and the Workforce. In that capacity she played a major role in the creation of the nation's workforce development laws, including the Workforce Investment Act, the National School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the National Skills Standards Act.
Contact: mclagett@ncee.org
John Colbert is Senior Counsel. He previously served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration. He has also served in the Department of Labor's legislative affairs office, where he handled legal aspects of the department's employment and training programs. He represented the Clinton Administration in negotiations with congressional leaders on the Workforce Investment Act of 1998.
Contact: jcolbert@ncee.org
Gerard (Gerri) Fiala is the Director of Workforce Research. She has three decades of experience in the training and employment fields, in both the public and private sectors. She has served as Senior Counselor for Economic Development at the American Association of Community Colleges and as the administrator of the U. S. Department of Labor's Office of Policy Development, Evaluation and Research. She managed the Labor Department's interagency teams that helped secure the enactment of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and other workforce-related legislation.
Contact: gfiala@ncee.org
Robert Holm is Senior Analyst for Economic Development. He has provided workforce and economic development services to major corporations, government, academia and small enterprises in the US and abroad. In the US, he established a workforce consulting center with Harley Davidson, Manpower, Johnson Controls and the University of Wisconsin and developed employment and training programs for Goodwill Industries and One-Stop Job centers in Wisconsin. He has provided business strategy, facilitation and financing assistance to over 20 SMEs, banks, and federal, state, local and university departments of development. Overseas, he has advised the US Agency for International Development as well as governments and businesses in Africa and Latin America.
Contact: rholm@ncee.org
Jacqueline Kraemer is Director of Alternative Education Research. Her work focuses on strengthening education programs available to young people who leave the traditional education system. Most recently, she managed a project to develop standards-based curriculum materials for Job Corps centers and Youth Opportunity grantees. Before joining NCEE she studied school-community partnerships for the Harvard Family Research Project and administered a public-school-based Youth Corps program affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.
Contact: jkraemer@ncee.org
Mark Troppe is Director of Economic and Workforce Development. He previously served in the US Department of Commerce/National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, where he helped small, modernizing manufacturers retrain their workforces. Troppe also served in the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, and he worked as director of training for USWeb, an Internet consulting company.
Contact: mtroppe@ncee.org