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For media inquiries, please contact: All_Editorial@abtassoc.com Stan Crock has more than 40 years of writing experience, including three decades as a journalist for major news outlets, more than a decade of proposal writing, and marketing and communications experience. He has written for such outlets as Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, The New Republic, Investopedia, TheStreet.com, and bestsories.ca. He has worked on proposals for Accenture, McKinsey, IBM, Abt Global, and other firms. Crock has worked in marketing and media relations for Abt since 2018.

Dr. James White, a registered nurse and Collaborative Specialist in Global Health (CSGH), is a senior health specialist with a focus on infectious disease and global health security (GHS). He has over 20 years of experience that includes delivery of emergency response programs in emergency and fragile settings, pandemic preparedness and response, health systems strengthening, and public-private collaboration for GHS. White has worked in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America assisting in both acute outbreak response and preparation for health emergencies. He also represents Abt as a technical expert on external GHS and pandemic preparedness working groups. His clients have included the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the Canadian International Development Association (CIDA) (now Global Affairs Canada).

Ellen Bobronnikov has extensive research and evaluation experience in educational and social policy in both domestic and international contexts. Her focus includes project management, evaluations of federal and local programs, and the provision of technical assistance. She has experience conducting impact, implementation, and process studies.

Shelly Spoeth brings more than 25 years of strategic communication and social marketing experience to tackling complex health and social issues.  She  worked for a decade with pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients while at public relations firms including Ketchum, FleishmanHillard and Cohn & Wolfe. She then worked as a consultant for government and nonprofit clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on behavioral change challenges ranging from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. Spoeth has implemented, evaluated, and managed dozens of projects that improved health outcomes. Her capabilities include formative research and digital outreach.

René Nutter is an experienced leader with more than two decades of  history with developing and operating government contracts. She’s also worked with the private sector and foundational work with organizations such as Yale, Harvard, and the Gates Foundation.

Dr. Fiona Mactaggart is a multi-disciplinary technical advisor with more than 10 years of experience in monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL); infectious disease control; and public health. As a co-lead of Abt's MERL portfolio, she draws on complexity theory and scientific methods to help clients test what works, discover why it works, and provide timely evidence-based recommendations to inform important decisions about policy and practice. Mactaggart contributes to business development, programme delivery, and thought leadership. She works in five key areas: monitoring (e.g., design of digital tools and visualisation platforms) research (e.g., cross-sectional survey design), evaluation methodologies (e.g., contribution analysis), learning (e.g., portfolio level evidence-informed strategic decision making), and cross-cutting MERL capabilities (e.g., adaptive management and GEDSI). Mactaggart has worked extensively in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Dr. Hecht is an environmental economist with more than 19 years of experience in economic analysis, policy analysis, and research. His primary areas of expertise are in environmental economics, cost-benefit analysis, regulatory economics, and decision analysis. Dr. Hecht is an expert in estimating the monetary value of “non-market” benefits, such as improvements in environmental quality, public health, safety, and security. Hecht has over 10 years of experience in enviromental economic analysis and in evaluating the costs and benefits of mitigation measures

Sean McClellan, Ph.D. is a mixed-methods researcher with over a decade of experience in full cycle health services research. He has experience managing research projects, developing analytic designs, cleaning and analyzing administrative data, fielding rigorous surveys, conducting qualitative interviews, and communicating findings in plain language.

Sarah Gibson is a project-management specialist with 23 years of experience in public policy research. She has more than 20 years of experience managing complex projects, implementing random assignment studies and researching and analyzing policy for clients such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She is proficient in project management, including resource management, budgeting and quality control.

Elizabeth Giardino’s evaluation and technical assistance work on housing, community development, asset building, and government innovation policies and programs promotes opportunity and healthy outcomes for people across the U.S. Giardino specializes in leading teams, strategic planning, and relationship building, and has proven expertise in incorporating community-based participatory research into technical assistance engagements.