Our Team

Suparna Bhaskaran is a non-resident fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School; the project manager and a co-principal investigator of the Color of Wealth in Chicago Study; and an ethnographer working on intersectional and transdisciplinary approaches to wealth.

Suparna has taught gender and sexuality studies at Antioch College and Agnes Scott College and is currently teaching at the Ohio State University. She was a policy researcher on projects related to the Detroit water crisis in the aftermath of municipal bankruptcy and in the Just Public Finance Program at the Othering and Belonging Institute (University of California, Berkeley). She also served as a health policy researcher in Ohio Governor Strickland’s administration. Bhaskaran organizes with community groups in the Midwest that work on immigrant and refugee rights, popular education, and transnational and multi-issue politics. 

Suparna's publications include “Flattening the Curve or Flattening Life?  Everyday Life Is a Constant Struggle; COVID-19 Just Makes It Worse,” Economic and Political Weekly (2021); “Remembering Latina Feminist Philosopher Maria Lugones,” Sinister Wisdom (forthcoming, 2021); Public Health & Wealth in Post-Bankruptcy Detroit (2017); Pinklining: How Wall Street’s Predatory Products Pillage Women’s Wealth, Opportunities, and Futures (2016); and Made in India: Decolonization, Queer Sexualities, Transnational Projects (2004). She has a BA in Sociology and a PhD in Anthropology.

Ofronama Biu is a research assistant at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. She recently received a PhD in Public and Urban Policy from the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment at The New School. Ofronama’s research focuses on racial and gender stratification and labor market outcomes. She is also a research manager for worker education and workforce development at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Dr. Grieve Chelwa is the director of Research at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Before joining The New School, Grieve was a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business, where he also served as the director of the MBA program. Before joining the University of Cape Town, Grieve was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African Studies at Harvard University. His scholarly work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Economic Literature, Applied Economics Letters, Social Science and Medicine, Daedalus, and Economy and Society. Grieve's opinions have appeared in outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, France 24, and Bloomberg. 

Maria-Elena Grant is the associate program director at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. She implements plans and programs to fulfill grant requirements and advance the mission, agenda, and priorities of the Institute, both within the university and externally. Maria-Elena has worked for 14 years at the New School and is an accomplished activist and musician. 

A British-born child of Jamaican parents, Maria-Elena moved with her family to the Bronx in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Maria-Elena co-founded Blues, a social networking group for lesbians, the first of its kind in the borough. After moving to Brooklyn in 1993 with her partner, filmmaker Cyrille Phipps, Maria-Elena joined the POC Steering Committee, a group of organizations of LGBT people of color working to achieve better visibility within the community. Maria-Elena was also a founding mother of the Audre Lorde Project and an early member of the Unity Fellowship Church in Brooklyn. For 31 years, Maria-Elena has been part of the Lavender Light Gospel Choir, which she has led as chairperson for more than two decades. She also serves as vice president of the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses, an organization that represents more than 40,000 singers worldwide.  

In 2007, Maria-Elena joined the New School community as operations manager in the Marketing and Communication department. While a full-time employee, Maria-Elena earned a Bachelor of Science with Honors at The New School. She was chosen by her peers to serve as co-chair of The New School’s Staff Senate. 

For 25 years, Avi Green has worked to build organizations, support rising leaders, strengthen democracy, and advance justice. He joined the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School as the director of Strategy in early 2021.

Before joining the institute’s team, Avi served the Scholars Strategy Network as executive director. He helped build a small program dedicated to increasing the use of research to improve public policy and strengthen democracy into a national organization of more than 1,500 member researchers and 36 chapters with a staff of 12 and a budget of more than $3 million. As an editor, press strategist, and podcaster, he helped professors communicate in venues ranging from the New York Times to The Daily Show. As an advisor and trainer, Avi helped researchers build collaborations with policymakers, advocates, and community leaders in dozens of states.

As executive director of MassVOTE, a Massachusetts organization that works to reduce racial disparities in voting and civic engagement, Avi helped reduce the racial turnout gap. He also helped build new programs, including the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership. Avi helped support rising leaders, including Ayanna Pressley, now a member of Congress; Sonia Chang-Diaz, now a state senator; and Kim Janey, who recently became the first female and first Black mayor of Boston. In 2011’s redistricting process, Avi helped lead a nonpartisan coalition that resulted in a bipartisan vote for new district maps that doubled the number of majority-minority districts in Massachusetts. He also partnered with Common Cause Massachusetts to help lead the drive behind the Massachusetts Elections Modernization Act of 2014. In addition, he conducted the first election audit in Massachusetts history. For his work Avi was awarded the Kivie Kaplan Humanitarian Award by the Boston Branch of the NAACP.  He also served as the chair of Boston’s Elections Advisory Committee and rewrote the city’s poll worker training manual.

Avi has served on the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission and the Massachusetts Local Elections District Review Commission. He volunteers on many nonprofit advisory and governance boards, including Next Generation Politics. Avi also observed elections in Northern Ireland and played a small role in the presidential recount in Florida in 2000.

Darrick Hamilton is a university professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Darrick examines social stratification and political economy in order to move policy and practice in fundamentally new directions that promote economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement. 

Considered one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, Darrick has been profiled in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and the Wall Street Journal. In 2017, he was featured in Politico's50 Ideas Shaping American Politics and the People Behind Them issue. In 2020, Darrick was named a Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the Group Health Foundation. 

Darrick has been involved in crafting policy proposals that have garnered media attention and inspired legislative proposals at the federal, state, and local levels, including baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee. In 2020, Darrick served as a member of the economic committee of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. He has testified before several Senate and House committees, including the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Banking Committee.  

Darrick was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and received a PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina.

As senior vice president for Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice and chief diversity officer, Melanie Hart focuses on promoting the strategies, values, and practices of equity, diversity, inclusion and social justice across The New School. Melanie brings to this work a strong connection to the university and extensive experience in social justice-based institutional management and change. Melanie is an alum of the university’s MA program in Public and Urban Policy at the Milano School, where she is presently completing her PhD. She received her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and practiced law as a corporate and securities attorney before returning to public service in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors and with city agencies. Most recently, she served as the deputy commissioner for Workforce Development at the New York City Department of Small Business Services. Before that, she was the executive vice president of Community Programs and Development at the New York City Housing Authority.

Chris Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School and the co-founder and co-chair of the Economic Security Project. His work focuses on contemporary issues in progressive political economy, including the history of central banking, antitrust policy, guaranteed income studies, and tax policy. A senior advisor to the Macroeconomic Analysis team at the Roosevelt Institute, Chris is currently writing a book chronicling the post-Bretton Woods political transformation of central banking in the United States. His first book, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, was published by St Martin’s Press in 2018.

Chris has a masters in Economics from The New School of Social Research and graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with a bachelors in History and Literature. He was a co-founder of Facebook. A former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he now serves on the boards of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Washington Square Park Conservancy. He lives in New York’s Greenwich Village with his husband and their two children. 

Henry A.J. Ramos is a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. He previously served as the chief executive officer of the Oakland, California-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a leading research, technical assistance, and policy advocacy group focused on expanding economic security for disadvantaged populations across the United States. 

Over the years, Henry has served as a leading member of various governing and advisory boards, including those of the Nonprofit Finance Fund (of which he is currently the board chair), the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy (of which he is the founding editor), the Women’s Foundation of California, PartnersGlobal, the Romare Bearden Foundation, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

Henry received a BA in Political Economy from the University of California at Berkeley, an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a JD from UC Berkeley Law School.

Nina Turner, the oldest of seven children, grew up in a working-class family in Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard community. After working her way through college and graduate school—she earned an associate’s degree from Cuyahoga Community College and a bachelor’s and a master’s from Cleveland State University—she started a career dedicated to keeping Ohio working families afloat.

Nina made history in 2005 as the first woman to represent ward one on the Cleveland City Council, and again in 2008 as the first African American woman to serve as a state senator in Ohio’s 25th District. She went on to serve as the chair of party engagement for the Ohio Democratic Party, leading the effort to build a more robust and inclusive organizing infrastructure and support for local Democratic candidates across the state.

Nina took her record of accomplishments and commitment to justice to the nation when she became a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and national co-chair for Bernie 2020. Her extensive travels showed her the commonality of the struggles faced by people in communities across the country. Between those two campaigns, Nina served as the president of the national grassroots political organization Our Revolution. When the Congressional Seat in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District became open, she ran a grassroots campaign focused on advancing progressive ideas and policies that would lift the working families of Northeast Ohio. 

Nina is a wife and mother and a proud grandmother. She is a former assistant professor of history at her alma mater, Cuyahoga Community College; a member of Sigma Gamma Rho; and the host of the “Hello Somebody” podcast on iHeartRadio. When she is not speaking truth to power, she enjoys traveling, working out, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends. 

James B. Stewart is a Professor Emeritus at Penn State University.  Stewart holds advanced degrees in Economics (Cleveland State, MA; Notre Dame, PhD), and an undergraduate degree in mathematics. At Penn State, he also served as vice provost for Educational Equity and director of the Black Studies Program. As vice provost, he was responsible for planning, developing, coordinating, articulating, and advocating for the university’s goals, policies, and procedures pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). James has served as a consultant on DEI issues for several universities and the Department of Defense. He is a past president of three national professional organizations: the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the National Economic Association (NEA). In 2021, he was the recipient of the Samuel Z. Westerfield Distinguished Service Award, a recognition bestowed by the NEA on an African American economist with a distinguished record throughout their career of scholarship, teaching, research, and public service. James' research interests include stratification economics, the economics of discrimination, and employment relations. From 1989 to 1995, he served as editor of the Review of Black Political Economy and in 2022 was appointed as inaugural director of the Black Economic Research Center for the 21st Century.