SASE 2028 Conference

Joseph Wong

Professor Joseph Wong is Vice-President, International, at the University of Toronto, where he is also a Professor of Political Science and a Professor in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He was the Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School from 2013 to 2023 and held the Canada Research Chair in Health, Democracy, and Development for two terms from 2006 to 2016. He was selected to be a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation mentor and fellow in 2023.

Professor Wong is the author of many academic articles and several books, including the latest From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia in 2022, published by Princeton University Press, as well as Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental States (2011) and Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004), both published by Cornell University Press. His academic articles have been published in The Lancet, Perspectives on Politics, the Annual Review of Political Science, the Bulletin of the WHO, Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Journal of East Asian Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, among others.

Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals and in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Professor Wong founded the Reach Alliance: http://reachalliance.org/what-is-reach. Focusing on how development interventions reach the world’s hardest to reach (e.g. the poorest of the poor, the geographically remote, administratively invisible, socially marginalized), the Reach Alliance has produced over 90 case studies and published its findings in outlets such as the Bulletin of the WHO, the BMJ Global Health, Lancet, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, among others. The Reach Alliance comprises nine university partners globally, including Tecnológico de Monterrey, University of Oxford, University College London, University of Melbourne, Ashesi University (Ghana), the University of Cape Town, Singapore Management University, and most recently, Howard University.

Michelle Holder

Michelle Holder is an Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, and was an Urban Institute One Million Black Women Research Partnership Scholar in 2023. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Roosevelt Institute in New York. Her research focuses on Black workers and women of color in the American labor market. Michelle has testified before the U.S. Congress as well as the City Council of New York on issues such as the gender wage gap, prohibiting discrimination based on unemployment status, infrastructure investment, and Black men and employment. Michelle has also appeared on, or been quoted in, major media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Lily, the New York Amsterdam News, El Diario, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist, TheGrio, Politico, The Guardian, USA Today, The 19th, Marketplace, MarketWatch, Bloomberg and Vox.  Her first book, African American Men and the Labor Market during the Great Recession, was published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan, and her second book, Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy, co-authored with Alan Aja, was published in 2021 by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.  Michelle received a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University, a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Michigan, and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Sponsored by the SASE Women and Gender Forum

Erin A. Cech

Dr. Erin Cech (she/her) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Mechanical Engineering (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from UC San Diego and undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Sociology from Montana State University. Cech’s research examines cultural mechanisms of inequality reproduction in the workforce broadly and STEM fields specifically. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It has been covered by The New York Times, NPR, and Washington Post. Cech is the author of two books: The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (2021) and Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering (with M. Blair-Loy; 2022). She was named one of Business Equality Magazine’s “40 LGBTQ+ Leaders Under 40” and was honored with the University of Michigan’s prestigious Henry Russel Award (2021) and Faculty Recognition Award (2024).