Leadership Team
Adam Hollowell
Adam Hollowell serves as Senior Research Associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and Director of the Inequality Studies Minor at Duke University. He is also the Faculty Director of the Benjamin N. Duke Memorial Scholarship Program and Director of the Global Inequality Research Initiative. An award-winning educator, he teaches ethics and inequality studies across multiple departments at Duke University, including the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Program in Education, the Department of History, and the Sanford School of Public Policy. He is the co-author, with Jamie McGhee, of You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge (Broadleaf Books, 2022).
David Malone
David Malone’s work focuses on educational psychology, applications of cognitive science to teaching and learning, literacy, student-centered approaches to instruction, experiential and service learning, and learning disabilities.
Gwendolyn Wright
Gwen Wright is the senior administrator and research scientist for the Cook Center. She oversees the development and implementation of programs and projects in support of the strategic vision and goals of the Center.
Keisha Bentley-Edwards
Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards is the Associate Director of Research and Director of the Health Equity Working Group for the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and an Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, at Duke University. She holds several leadership positions within Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and faculty affiliations with Duke’s Global Health and Cancer Institutes.
Dr. Bentley-Edwards’ research focuses on how racism, gender, and culture influence development throughout the lifespan, especially for African Americans. Her research emphasizes cultural strengths and eliminating structural barriers to support healthy development in communities, families, and schools. Dr. Bentley-Edwards has published and lectured extensively on the use of racial socialization and racial cohesion strategies to facilitate positive outcomes in Black adolescents, as well as how teacher perceptions and school resources can influence disciplinary practices and classroom management. As head of the Cook Center’s Health Equity Working Group, Dr. Bentley-Edwards leads a mixed method study investigating the relationships between religion and spirituality and cardiovascular disease risk factors for African Americans. She is dedicated to healthy birth and pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health in general. Dr Bentley-Edwards is committed to eliminating racism and its effects on equitable outcomes in health systems, schools, and society. Her research has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, IBM, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bentley-Edwards regularly shares her expertise on the role of structural racism and bias on health, education and social outcomes with families, policymakers, practitioners, and the media.
Kristen Stephens
Kristen Stephens is interested in legal and policy issues with regard to gifted education at the federal, state, and local levels. Her research has also focused on how teachers assess creative student products to inform future instruction.
Research and Administrative Staff
Amber Holland
Amber Holland is a Senior Research Associate and Communications Strategist with the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. She received her degrees in Communication from NC State University (PhD), UNC Greensboro (MA), and Christopher Newport University (BA), and also holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Old Dominion University. In her role with the Cook Center, Amber develops and implements communication and marketing strategies to support Cook Center initiatives and research, translates research into policy briefs and materials for dissemination to various audiences, and partners with Cook Center stakeholders and key communication offices for Duke University and Duke University Health System.
Erica Phillips
Erica R. Phillips is the Educational Equity and Policy Specialist at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. She serves on the Educational Policy working group, focusing on K-12 students. Erica is a research associate for a federal grant studying the benefits and inequities of gifted programming. She has an M.A. in Educational Equity, Policy, and Reform from Duke University and B.A. in Elementary Education with a specialization in Spanish Language and Literature from The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Erica comes to The Cook Center with previous experience as a public school teacher. Working in both Durham Public Schools and Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools, Erica believes in developing the whole child, balancing culturally-responsive teaching methods with maintaining high academic expectations. Her educational passions align with removing barriers for all people to reach their fullest potential, through community organizing and policy changes.
JoAnn O’Neal
JoAnn O’Neal is the Financial Analyst II/Business Manager for the Cook Center. She also serves as the Grant Manager and is responsible for pre and post award administration of grants and contracts for the Center.
Kennedy Ruff
Kennedy Ruff graduated from Guilford College in 2022 with a B.A in Psychology and a minor in Biology. During high school, Kennedy was a part of the first cohort for the Hank & Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Institute and now oversees the program. In addition to coordinating the Young Scholars Summer Research Institute, Kennedy is a research associate to Dr. Keisha Bentley Edwards with her research in health equity.
Madeleine Braksick
Madeleine (Maddie) Braksick graduated from Duke University in 2020 with a B.A. in Public Policy and Global Health. She taught for 2 years in Nashville public schools as a 5th and 6th grade special education teacher.
In her role at the Cook Center, Maddie is responsible for all things Cook Center communications: newsletters, social media, podcast production, and more. She is especially interested in distribution and accessibility of Cook Center research to advance the impact of the organization. She has her Masters in Special Education from Lipscomb University.
Rachel Ruff
Rachel Ruff works to disseminate research findings and current events to media materials for the Cook center past, current, and ongoing projects. Additionally, she works with the Inequality Studies minor and the Hank and Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Research Institute. She graduated from Fayetteville State University with her BA in Political Science and a minor in Creative & Professional Writing.
Shahrazad Shareef
Shahrazad Shareef is a scholar who seeks the end of labor exploitation and freedom from contemporary systems of domination. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, her undergraduate training led to a BA in Economics and in 2021 she completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Duke University. Her academic writing is broadly concerned with global regimes of capital accumulation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the critique of modern social sciences, and the economic history of Italy. Using humanistic analytical frameworks first pioneered by Italian autonomist and the postcolonial traditions, her projects investigate contemporary shifts in valorization, forms of work, and debt. Her dissertation examined the origins of economic development in Italy in the immediate post-war era. At the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, she will focus on expanding the distribution of the center’s insights on inequality and drawing attention to the minor in inequality studies. Fiercely committed to the advancement of the working poor, she looks forward to building relationships with staff, students, and faculty across the university.
Postdoctoral Scholars and Associates
Elizabeth Degefe
Elizabeth Degefe is a Postdoctoral Associate in Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity. She is an organizational behavior scholar who specializes in using AI methods to study issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace.
Quran Karriem
Quran is an experimental musician, media artist and theorist working primarily with electronic and algorithmic media. His research is concerned with human improvisation and automated decision, particularly insofar as they reproduce sovereign power and racial hierarchy through semi-autonomous knowledge systems. His work examines the power relations and ideologies that inhere in the design of digital systems, processes and interfaces, and is motivated by a concern with the operative and recursive nature of computational, racialized capital in postmodern sociotechnical assemblages.
A multiple award-winning software designer and former product executive, Quran has led development teams for a number of media and technology companies and applies a decade of direct experience with systems design, data management and organizational structure in the context of ‘start-up culture’ to social critique. His product initiatives have been recognized by such global research and trade bodies as Gartner Research, the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and Frost & Sullivan.
Faculty Affiliates
Alberto Ortega
Dr. Alberto Ortega is an Assistant Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. He is a public policy scholar with health and social policy research focusing on the well-being of underserved and vulnerable populations. Ortega’s earlier work examined educational barriers and inequities faced by racial and ethnic minorities. His current research explores issues surrounding access to health care and social determinants of health outcomes, including substance use, mental health, and mortality resulting from victimization. Dr. Ortega is an Emerging Poverty Scholar at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also a Resource Center for Minority Aging Research Scientist with USC’s Minority Aging Health Economics Research Center, an NSF Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics Fellow, and an American Economic Association Summer Program Fellow and mentor. Dr. Ortega is currently the chair of the communications committee for the American Society for Hispanic Economists (ASHE).
Ashleigh Shelby Rosette
Dr. Ashleigh Shelby Rosette is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations and a Center of Leadership and Ethics scholar at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Professor Rosette studies diversity, leadership, and negotiations in organizational settings. Her research has been published in top academic journals and featured in prominent media outlets. She received her Bachelor in Business Administration degree and Master in Professional Accounting degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to academia, she worked for Arthur Andersen LLP as a Certified Public Accountant.
Bruce Orenstein
Bruce Orenstein is currently producing the documentary series Shame of Chicago: The Segregation of an American City. He also runs the Telling Our Stories Student Working Group at the Cook Center and teaches documentary production at the Arts of the Moving Image Program. Orenstein founded and directed the Chicago Video Project, one of the nation’s first studios dedicated to producing organizing-driven videos for grassroots social change organizations. His television credits include the Emmy-award winning WTTW documentary No Place to Live, and the nationally broadcast PBS documentaries, The Democratic Promise: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky and American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Orenstein led direct-action community organizations in low-income communities in Chicago and Seattle.
Eric Griffith
Dr. Eric Griffith received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as an MA in psychology from Boston University. He completed his dissertation fieldwork in central Mexico, focusing on the experiences of familial caregivers for people living with Alzheimer’s disease. Eric’s research interests include biocultural anthropology, dementia, cognitive aging, health disparities, and mixed methods research. As a postdoctoral fellow with the Cook Center, Eric is working on the NIH-funded project “The influence of religion/spirituality on Alzheimer’s Disease and its related dementias (ADRD) for African Americans.
Fenaba R. Addo
Fenaba R. Addo is an associate professor of public policy. Her recent work examines debt and wealth inequality with a focus on family and relationships and higher education, and union formation and economic strain as a social determinant of health and well-being. She has also focused on the role that consumer and family policies serve in reinforcing these relationships. Widely published in academic journals and policy outlets, her work on racial disparities in student debt, older Black women and wealth, and the Millennial racial wealth gap reflects her interests in bridging social demography with economic inequality, and sheds light on the ways that societal inequalities stem from historical legacies of racial exclusion and discrimination, and how they get reproduced over time. Dr. Addo was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University and holds a B.S. in Economics from Duke University. Dr. Addo was the Lorna Jorgensen Wendt Associate Professor of Money, Relationships, and Equality (MORE) in the School of Human Ecology’s Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison prior to joining the department.
She recently coauthored, with sociologist Jason Houle, A Dream Defaulted: The Student Debt Crisis Among Black Borrowers (Harvard Education Press, 2022), which centers the stories of black young adults within the broader student loan debt landscape and proposes policy solutions that can address racial disparities in student loan debt.
Henry McKoy
Dr. Henry C. McKoy, Jr. is the inaugural Director of the Office of State and Community Energy Programs in the U.S. Department of Energy, a presidential appointment he received in July 2022. He was previously the lead entrepreneurship faculty and Director of Entrepreneurship at NC Central University in the School of Business and was also on the faculty of the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as Professor of Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship. In addition, he taught in Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and was part of the faculty of Duke’s Executive Leadership Institute where he teaches on Public-Private Partnerships. Dr. McKoy has been a Fellow of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as an Aspen Institute Scholar. He previously had an appointment at Harvard University Kennedy School’s Ash Center, where he was an Associate Fellow of Municipal Innovation, and led the effort to launch a national network of economically inclusive and equitable cities. He served from 2010-2012 in the North Carolina Department of Commerce where he was appointed by the Governor as Assistant Secretary of Commerce. He holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill (BS, Ph.D.) and Duke (MS).
Jay Pearson
Jay A. Pearson’s research examines how policy sponsored structural inequality influences social determination of health. He is particularly interested in the health effects of conventional and non-conventional resources associated with racial assignment, ethnic identity, national origin, immigration, and cultural orientations.
Research Assistants and Fellows
Brittany Reaves
I am a JD/MA in History dual degree student at North Carolina Central University. My research has been centered around constitutional law, civil rights, and African American history. As a teaching assistant of Dr. Jim Harper II, I was able to participate in the History of Inequality course by adding a legal perspective to the content, assisting with lectures, and giving constructive feedback to undergraduate students on their work products.
Catherine Kiplagat
Catherine is a freshman majoring in Chemistry hoping to pursue biotech research and is a student-athlete on the track and field team. Catherine participated in the Young Scholars program prior to Duke and researched the effects of black representation on predominately black cities and how mental health impacts recidivism rates in black inmates.
Imari Smith
A recent graduate of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health with a Master of Public Health in Health Behavior, Imari Smith currently works as an Associate in Research for the Cook Center’s Health Equity Working Group. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University in women’s studies with a minor in chemistry, and was the first in the history of the Women’s Studies department (now Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies) to graduate with Highest Distinction for her honors thesis titled Black Femininity through the White Speculum. Through her work with the Cook Center, Imari continues her studies of the intersections of gender, race, class, and health inequities.
Qirui Ju
Qirui Ju is a Master of Arts in Economics graduate from Duke University. He is passionate about conducting quantitative research on policy-related questions, including inequality, labor, technology, and health. Qirui aims to promote progress in society through his research. Prior to Duke, he graduated with the highest distinction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Qirui will serve as a research associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity.
Runling Wu
Runling is currently helping Dr. Ali with his collaborators on disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on different racial communities. Her research interests include intergenerational mobility, early childhood education and broad impacts of social inequality.
Soumya Mathew
Soumya is a first year Master of Public Policy (MPP) student at Sanford School of Public Policy. She has three years of research experience in the development sector. Currently, she is assisting Prof Raffi E. García with his research on automation and pay transparency.
Xin Lin
Xin is a research assistant working with Dr. Raffi García on a project investigating the game theory of self-reporting race in small business loan applications. They are also researching gender and racial inequality in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
Zhuoning Li
Zhuoning is an economics graduate student at Duke who is currently working with visiting faculty affiliate Raffi García. Zhuoning was named an M.A. Merit Scholar in 2022.
Visiting Faculty
Burca Kizilirmak Yakisir
Burca Kizilirmak Yakisir is a Professor of Economics, at Ankara University in Ankara, Türkiye. Her research interests include inequality, feminist economics, applied economics, and time use. Her most recent research focuses on the effects of indirect taxes and inflation on inequality. She has also conducted research on time use, focusing on the gender differences in paid and unpaid work time, as well as discretionary time. Another area of study she is interested in is women’s labor force participation and employment. Her research has appeared in journals such as Feminist Economics, Women’s Studies International Forum, Applied Economics Letters, and Review of Development Economics.
Kizilirmak Yakisir has actively participated in research projects as both a project director and researcher. She has received support from organizations such as TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye) and UNDP Türkiye.
She has taught classes at various educational levels on topics such as Economics of Gender, Turkish Economy, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and Mathematics for Economists.
She is a member of the Association for Monitoring Gender Equality (CEID), Feminist Researchers Working on Women’s Labor (KEFA), International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR), Turkish Economic Association, The International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics (GEM-IWG), and The Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies (CAWLS).
Regarding her responsibilities Kizilirmak Yakisir has held roles within Ankara University. She held the positions of Department Chair and Chair of the Economic Policy Division. She has also served as the Deputy Director of the European Research Center at the Ankara University.