Michelle Miller-Adams is an expert on asset-building strategies and the author of Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream (Brookings Institution Press, 2002). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science and Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University, and her B.A. in History (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her professional career has spanned the fields of non-profit management, finance, research, and academia; positions have included strategic planning consultant at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, vice president for programs at the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation), and vice president for research at Salomon Brothers. She is the author of two books and numerous articles and foundation reports, and was the principal investigator for a Ford Foundation-sponsored research grant concerning asset-building strategies for fighting poverty. She is currently an assistant professor of political science at Grand Valley State University.

Bridget Timmeney, Special Projects Coordinator

Bridget Timmeney assists with business and community alignment related to workforce development and the Kalamazoo Promise. She also conducts research related to workplace literacy programs, developing community benchmark indicators, and recently developed a baseline indicator system to measure social and economic impacts of a rural casino. Her responsibilities have included contract management, program monitoring, and program evaluation of federal and state workforce development programs. She has held a number of positions including EEO officer, grant manager, Kalamazoo County Earned Income Tax Credit Initiative coordinator, workforce development model program coordinator, and program and fund development specialist. Prior to joining the Institute in 1986, she received her Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana where she specialized in social work policy, planning, and program evaluation.