Heller at 55 Brandeis University The Heller School for Social Policy and Management
Heller 55th Anniversary Celebration

Keynotes

Sabina Alkire

DR. SABINA ALKIRE directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a research centre within the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Her research has included conceptual work related to the capability approach and human development; the methodologies and applications of multidimensional poverty measurement, and the measurement of well-being, gross-national-happiness, and agency/empowerment.  Alkire was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2010.  Her publications include ‘Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction,’ as well as numerous articles in Philosophy and Economics. She holds a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.  

OPHI, an economic research center within the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, aims to build and advance a more systematic methodological and economic framework for reducing multidimensional poverty, grounded in people’s experiences and values. OPHI’s work draws from Amartya Sen’s capability approach and works to implement this approach by creating real tools that inform policies to reduce poverty by broadening poverty measurement, improving data on poverty, building capacity, and impacting policy.

Robert Reich

photo by p. flaherty

ROBERT B. REICH has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President-Elect Obama’s transition advisory board.  He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock,”  “The Work of Nations," and "Beyond Outrage." His award-winning film, "Inequality for All," was released in 2013. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Vision Foundation Prize, by the former Czech president, for his pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the century.

He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School.  He was appointed University Professor and the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University and the Heller School for Social policy and Management in 1997 and taught at Heller through 2005.  He is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.