People
The faculty and staff of the Scrivner Institute are defined by their passion, expertise and dedication to using public policy as a tool to create a more just, equitable and healthy world. Learn more about them and how they're advancing positive public policy solutions below.
Scrivner Institute Team
Naazneen Barma
Director
Naazneen H. Barma is Director of the Doug and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, Scrivner Chair, and Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is a political scientist whose work spans topics including peacebuilding, foreign aid, the political economy of development, and global governance. She is currently working on a collaborative project that aims to develop a principled and pragmatic roadmap for a modern global liberalism. She is author of The Peacebuilding Puzzle: Political Order in Post-Conflict States (Cambridge University Press 2017), co-author of Rents to Riches? The Political Economy of Natural Resource-Led Development (World Bank, 2011), and co-editor of Institutions Taking Root: Building State Capacity in Challenging Contexts (World Bank, 2014) and The Political Economy Reader: Markets as Institutions (Routledge, 2008). Prior to joining the Korbel School faculty, she was Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School from 2000–2010 and previously worked from 1998–2001 and 2007–2010 as a development practitioner at the World Bank.
Rebecca Montgomery
Director of Democracy and Civil Discourse Initiatives
Katie Aker
Assistant Director
Katie Aker is the Assistant Director for the Scrivner Institute of Public Policy. She has a Master of Public Administration and a Master of Arts in International Education Management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Katie has previously worked as a program manager and coordinator for several social impact initiatives, including programs related to university-community engaged research, ocean conservation and social enterprise, and sustainable agriculture action research. Prior to graduate school, Katie served as a community economic development volunteer with the Peace Corps in Peru and completed her undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and Spanish at Colorado State University.
Scrivner Affiliated Faculty
Lapo Salucci
Teaching Associate Professor
Expertise: Urban Politics and Policy, Demographics, US Policy, Methodology, Statistics
Ajenai Clemmons
Assistant Professor
Professor
Assistant Professor
Martin Rhodes
Professor
Frank Laird
Associate Professor
Hinckley Jones-Sanpei
Professor
Matt Kazan
Associate Professor of the Practice
Ex Officio
Naazneen Barma
Director, Scrivner Institute of Public Policy
Fritz Mayer
Dean, Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Advisory Committee
Jennifer Greenfield, chair
Graduate School of Social Work
Deborah Avant
Korbel School of International Studies
Rachel Epstein
Korbel School of International Studies
Andrew Goetz
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Rafael Ioris
Dept. of History, College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Frank Laird
Korbel School of International Studies
Govind Persad
Sturm College of Law
Chiara Piovani
Dept. of Economics, College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Martin Rhodes
Korbel School of International Studies
Lolita Tabron
Morgridge College of Education
Kimon Valavanis
Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science
Ellen Winiarczyk
University College
