Speakers' Bios
MARGARET BLOOD
Margaret Blood is the Founder and President of Strategies for Children, Inc., where she oversees the Early Education for All Campaign and related public policy and consulting projects. The goal of the statewide Early Education for All Campaign is to make high-quality early childhood education available to all young children in Massachusetts.
Margaret previously led the United Way of Massachusetts Bay's award winning Success By 6 initiative. Prior to Success By 6, Margaret served as the Director of Community Programs for the Department of Pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and Boston University School of Medicine. Margaret began her career as a community organizer in inner city Boston where she created an after school program and founded the Mission Possible summer program. She went on to work in the Massachusetts legislature for ten years, first as a legislative aide, and then as founding Executive Director of the Massachusetts Legislative Children's Caucus.
Margaret holds a Master in Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and has a Bachelor's degree in Spanish and business from Skidmore College. She is particularly passionate about Guatemala where she serves as a volunteer teacher at a school for child workers. In 2007, she founded Mil Milagros, Inc. to help address the pressing health, nutrition and education issues facing children in the Guatemalan Highlands.
CHUCK COLLINS
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and author of several books, including Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity (New Press, 2005). He coordinates a national effort to preserve the federal estate tax, our nation’s only tax on inherited wealth. He co-authored with Bill Gates Sr., Wealth and Our Commonwealth, a case for taxing inherited fortunes.
In 1995, he co-founded United for a Fair Economy (UFE) to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support popular education and organizing efforts to address inequality. In 1997, he co-founded Responsible Wealth, a project of UFE to bring together business leaders and investors to publicly speak out against economic policies and corporate practices that worsen economic inequality. He was Executive Director of UFE from 1995-2001 and Program Director until 2005.
MICHAEL E. STONE, PH.D
Senior Fellow, Center for Social Policy, and Professor of Community Planning and Public Policy
University of Massachusetts Boston
For more than 35 years Stone has been involved in teaching, research, policy analysis, program development, technical assistance and advocacy on housing, living standards and participatory planning. He works with local community groups, city and state agencies, and national advocacy organizations. He is the author of nearly 50 reports, articles and chapters and 4 books. His book Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability has been called “the definitive book on housing and social justice in the United States.” His co-edited/co-authored work, Housing: Foundation for a New Social Agenda, has been called “a landmark in progressive housing thought.”
There are four major facets to Stone’s research and professional work: first, housing affordability, as defined and measured through his concept of “shelter poverty,” with emphasis on households headed by persons of color, women and elderly; second, the political economy of housing in the U.S., with particular attention to the structure and dynamics of the housing finance system; third, housing policy, on the various contours of housing policy in the U.S., but with increasing focus on models of social ownership – housing outside of the speculative market under various forms of resident and community control; fourth, collaborative action research with community organizations on issues of housing, income support, homelessness, and community change.
During 2002-2003, Professor Stone spent 10 months in Britain as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy. Based at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London, he studied Shelter Poverty and Social Housing in the UK through the lens of his work on these issues in the US.
RANDY ALBELDA, PH.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Social policy, and Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts Boston
Dr. Albelda has focused her research and teaching on a range of issues that have important policy implications including women's economic status, welfare reform, and family structure. Albelda has authored and co-authored a number of books, articles and reports focused on policies that affect the well-being of working families. She is the co-editor (with Ann Withorn) of Lost Ground: Welfare Reform Poverty and Beyond (South End Press, 2002) and author of the article “Welfare-to-Work, Farewell to Families? U.S. Welfare Reform and Work/Family Debates” in the March 2001 issue of Feminist Economics. Albelda also co-authored a report, "Choices and tradeoffs: The parent survey of child care in Massachusetts," which was published in 1999 by Parents United for Child Care. Parents United for Child Care has graciously given permission for the Sloan Work-Family Researchers Electronic Network to post a pdf version of this report on the website.
Expertise: Single Parents, Paid Family Leave - State, Changing Definitions of Families, Work-Family Balance, Low-Income Families, Combining Earnings and Public Support, Low-Wage Workers, and Family Policies. bias in radical theories of labor