Katherine S. Newman is Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of California. She is author of fourteen books on topics including the working poor, social mobility, apprenticeship, the impact of regressive taxation, and downward mobility.

Elisabeth S. Jacobs is Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and cofounder of WorkRise, a research-to-action network on jobs, workers, and mobility, for which she serves as deputy director. She has worked at the intersection of cutting-edge social science and public policy for nearly two decades.