About Us
Archon Fung is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Taubman Center . His research examines how public and private governance can be improved through civic participation, public deliberation, and transparency. His Empowered Participatory Governance: Reinventing Urban Democracy examines two such systems in low-income Chicago neighborhoods. Current projects also examine participatory initiatives in ecosystem management, toxics reduction, endangered species protection, local governance, and international labor standards. His recent books and edited collections include Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (Verso Press, 2003), Can We Eliminate Sweatshops? (Beacon Press, 2001), Working Capital: The Power of Labor's Pensions ( Cornell University Pres,s 2001), and Beyond Backyard Environmentalism (Beacon Press, 2000). His articles on regulation, rights, and participation appear in Politics and Society, Governance, Environmental Management, American Behavioral Scientist, and Boston Review. Fung received two S.B.s and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mary Graham co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and is a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Taubman Center . She is also a Visiting Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington , D.C. . Graham’s research focuses on the use of information strategies to foster social change, the politics of information, innovative approaches to health and safety regulation, and new trends in environmental policy. Graham’s most recent book, Democracy by Disclosure (Brookings/Governance Institute, 2002), makes the case that government-mandated transparency systems have shown great promise in recent years as innovative means of furthering public priorities but also present daunting challenges for government, the private sector, and the public at large. In this book, Graham examines three important systems in the United States, nutritional labeling, disclosure of toxic chemicals, and disclosure of medical errors, and suggests architectural characteristics that contribute to successful transparency systems. In an earlier book, The Morning After Earth Day (Brookings/Governance Institute, 1999), Graham examined new trends in U.S. environmental policy. Graham concluded that the next generation of environmental policies will tackle difficult problems – pollution from mobile sources and small businesses and conservation challenges concerning private lands, for example – that require new approaches. Graham has written for the Atlantic Monthly , Financial Times, Environment magazine, Issues in Science and Technology, the Brookings Review, and other publications. Graham holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and an undergraduate degree from Harvard-Radcliffe. She is a member of the board of directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is married and the mother of four children.
David Weil is Associate Professor of Economics at Boston University School of Management and Co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Taubman Center, Kennedy School of Government. His research spans the areas of labor market policy, industrial and labor relations, occupational safety and health, and regulatory policy. He has published widely in these areas, and has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other government agencies on a variety of projects. His research in this area has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. In addition, Weil has been a principal investigator of the Harvard Center for Textile and Apparel Research, at Harvard University since the Center's founding in 1991. Findings from this multi-year research project can be found in his recent book, A Stitch in Time: Lean Retailing and the Transformation of Manufacturing—Lessons from the Apparel and Textile Industries, co-authored with Fred Abernathy, John Dunlop, and Jan Hammond all of Harvard and published by Oxford University Press. Weil received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Public Policy from Harvard University.
Elena Fagotto is the Transparency Policy Project’s Senior Research Associate at the Kennedy School of Government. Her research focuses on information disclosure, civic engagement and public deliberation. She has conducted several detailed case studies of transparency policies, including banks disclosure of lending patterns to curb discrimination, school report cards disclosure, medical error reporting, and required disclosure to employees of health and safety risks in the workplace. She is co-author of various articles on targeted transparency, including “Improving Workplace Hazard Communication,” Issues in Science and Technology and “The Effectiveness of Regulatory Disclosure Policies,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. She has also written extensively on several models of public deliberation and on their impact in promoting public policy reform and citizen engagement. Prior to joining the Kennedy School, Fagotto worked as a consultant in the emerging markets and is a partner of Enterprise Consulting, a firm advising institutional clients in the financial, economic and social fields. She is the president of the board of directors of the Community Art Center, a Cambridge non-profit empowering underprivileged youth through the arts, and a volunteer mentor with the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston. She holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government and a Masters Degree in Political Science from LUISS University in Rome, Italy.