Jason Jabbari, PhD, MEd, is an Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he directs the Clark-Fox Policy Institute (CFPI) and the Center for Education Research, Practice, and Policy Partnerships (CERP3). A transdisciplinary social scientist, his research examines how policies, programs, and practices shape human capital development and social mobility for marginalized populations.

Dr. Jabbari’s professional identity is grounded in three pillars: his formative experience as an educator and school leader in low-income urban communities; his expertise in applying sociological theories and critical, quantitative, and computational methodologies to social policy research; and his commitment to research-practice partnerships in which he works to translate rigorous research into evidence-based interventions. Committed to policy change, Dr. Jabbari works collaboratively across disciplines and alongside community leaders to develop, test, and scale innovative policy solutions that improve the academic and economic trajectories across the life course.

Dr. Jabbari’s work has been supported by leading foundations, such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and Arnold Ventures. His research has appeared in both research and policy outlets, including Urban Education, Race and Social Problems, Brookings, and Forbes. Dr. Jabbari holds a PhD in Education from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Education in School Leadership from Harvard University.

Sean Joe is a nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among Black Americans, and is expanding the evidence base for effective practice with Black boys and young men. He writes about Community Science as a new perspective on knowledge co-produced by academic researchers and community members, which has the potential to enrich science by broadening our participatory research theories, designs, analytical methods, and the use of technological innovation.  Joe’s epistemological work focuses on the concept of race in medical and social sciences.

Working within the Center for Social Development, Joe has launched the Race and Opportunity Lab, which examines race, opportunity, and social mobility in the St. Louis region, working to reduce inequality in adolescents transition into adulthood. The lab leading community science project is HomeGrown STL, which is a multi-systemic placed-based capacity building intervention to enhance upward mobility opportunities and health of Black males ages 12-29 years in the St. Louis region. 

He is exploring new opportunities for engaging in larger-scale policy experiments by using data to examine wealth inequalities and barriers to wealth building for Black men. This includes understanding unequal labor market outcomes for men and the regional system-level factors that impact economic conditions in low- to moderate-income communities, which serve as barriers to equity in economic mobility, earnings, and capital access for Black workers.  

He serves on the Advisory Committee of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education, as well as on the boards of the St. Louis Education Fund and the American Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare.

In recognition of the impact of his work, Joe was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Society for Social Work and Research, the New York Academy of Medicine, and a Community Development Research Fellow of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Kim Johnson is a cancer epidemiologist. She has spent much of her research career focused on the etiology of pediatric cancer in both the general and high-risk (Neurofibromatosis Type 1) populations. Currently, her research focuses on how factors associated with access to care influence outcomes in pediatric, adolescent, and young adult cancer patients. Her research integrates data-driven methods to evaluate disparities, improve survival, and inform policies that enhance equitable care delivery. She has authored over 120 publications.

Johnson is a member of the Siteman Cancer Center and the American Association for Cancer Research. She co-leads the Children and Youth Collaborative Network at WashU. She has secondary appointments in the Department of Pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine and the School of Public Health. Johnson is an award-winning teacher and mentor who currently teaches Advanced Data Analysis in the Master of Public Health program. More information on her research and cancer epidemiology can be found at Cancer Epidemiology Connection.

A major focus of Melissa Jonson-Reid’s work is understanding how to improve the behavioral, educational and health outcomes associated with childhood exposure to trauma, particularly abuse and neglect. Her work responds to child maltreatment as a serious, prevalent public health concern.

Jonson-Reid has used multi-agency administrative data to identify targets of opportunity to leverage existing resources and/or evaluate policy and program efforts to promote healthy outcomes. She partners with community agencies to explore outcomes of interventions designed to support young families and youth involved with child welfare, as well as child abuse prevention efforts.

Jonson-Reid has practice experience in both domestic violence counseling and program administration as a school social worker in California; she currently provides evaluation consultation for state and community organizations.

At the Brown School, Jonson-Reid directs an NICHD-funded Center for Innovation in Child Maltreatment Policy, Research and Training and chairs the Violence and Injury Prevention specialization in the Master of Social Work program. Both of these involve collaboration with the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies. A former director of the Social Work Ph.D. program, she currently serves as chair or member of several doctoral student committees.

Jack Kirkland is an internationally known scholar who lectures, consults and writes on the African American family and social and economic development. Kirkland was an activist and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement and has since held a number of roles as a public servant and elected official.

In the classroom, Kirkland brings to life issues of community work, group relations, international social development, racism, social planning, and urban environments. His field-based summer course, “Poverty – The Impact of Institutionalized Racism,” immerses students in the community of East St. Louis and teaches them to strategize on policies that can combat the effects of intentional urban blight and poverty.

Currently, he serves as the social economic developer of The Helping Village in East St. Louis. Kirkland has also designed and led workshops in African-American culture for public school teachers across the country, focused on improving multicultural classroom environments.

Among his many recognitions, Kirkland was awarded a National Service Award from the National Association of Home and Services for Children, a Spirit of Crazy Horse award from the Black Hills Seminars, and the Distinguished Faculty Alumni Award from the Brown School, and he has been listed in the Library of Congress 2014.

Dr. Kohl’s scholarship, which draws upon several years of clinical social work practice with children and parents in low resource communities, is focused on the development, testing and implementation of interventions to promote the emotional development of young children, treat early childhood emotional and behavioral problems, and prevent child maltreatment. With a particular focus on families facing adversity, she has carried out this work with diverse populations within a broad range of service settings – locally, nationally and globally.  She has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Administration for Children and Families, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. Kohl holds a joint appointment as Research Director of the Hermann Center for Child and Family Development in the Division for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Washington University Medical School. The Hermann Center aims to advance the science on early childhood mental health to improve child and family outcomes prenatally through age 7. She teaches policy and practice courses within our Children, Youth and Family Concentration.