Homi Kharas is a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development, housed in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. His areas of expertise are in development economics, poverty alleviation, global trade and governance, and the emergence of the middle class. Prior to joining Brookings, Kharas spent 26 years at the World Bank, serving for seven years as Chief Economist for the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific region and Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Finance and Private Sector Development, responsible for the Bank’s advice on structural and economic policies, fiscal issues, debt, trade, governance, and financial markets.

Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Her areas of expertise are in federal fiscal and tax policy, democracy in America, U.S. government and policy, climate action and justice, and climate disasters and the environment. Prior to joining Brookings, Williamson was the policy director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors. She is also the co-director of the Africa Security Initiative and the Brookings series on opioids: “The Opioid Crisis in America: Domestic and International Dimensions.” Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Namibia, Niger, and Nigeria. She was previously a senior advisor to the congressionally-mandated Afghanistan Peace Process Study Group.

Robert Maxim is a fellow at Brookings Metro. Maxim conducts research and designs policy proposals exploring how technological change and other economic trends affect people and places. His areas of expertise are in technological change, place-based industrial policy, access to digital employment, state innovation economies, and Native American communities. Maxim is an enrolled citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and leads Brookings Metro’s research around Native American communities. His research has focused on the exclusion of Native Americans in U.S. federal government datasets, as well as how federal data misrepresents Native American identity.

Aaron Klein is Miriam K. Carliner Chair and senior fellow in the Center on Regulation and Markets, housed in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His areas of expertise are in financial regulation, infrastructure finance, housing finance, U.S. economic policy, transportation, and artificial intelligence and emerging technology. Prior to joining Brookings in 2016, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative. Between 2009 and 2012, Klein served as the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Treasury.