Michael J. Keegan and Paula Ganga

Michael has two decades of experience with both the private and public sectors encompassing strategic planning, business process redesign, strategic communications and marketing, performance management, change management, executive and team coaching, and risk-financing. Michael leads the IBM Center for The Business of Government's leadership research. As the Center’s Leadership Fellow, his work is at the nexus of the Center’s mission – connecting research to practice. My work at that the Center complements frontline experience of actual government executives with practical insights from thought leaders who produce Center reports – merging real-world experience with practical scholarship. The purpose is not to offer definitive solutions to the many management challenges facing executives, but to provide a resource from which to draw practical, actionable recommendations on how best to confront such issues. Michael also hosts and produces the IBM Center’s The Business of Government Hour. He has interviewed and profiled hundreds of senior government executives from all levels of government as well as recognized thought leaders focusing on a range of public management issues and trends. Over the last four years, Michael has expanded both the show’s format and reach – now broadcasting informational and educational conversations with dedicated public servants on two radio stations five times a week and anywhere at anytime over the web and at iTunes. Michael is also the managing editor of The Business of Government magazine, with a targeted audience of close to 14,000 government and non-government professionals. Additionally, he manages the Center’s bi-annual proposal review process that awards stipends to independent, third party researchers tackling a wide range of public management issues. Prior to joining the Center, Michael worked as a senior managing consultant with IBM GBS (Global Business Services) and as a principle consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Washington Consulting Practice (WCP). He led projects in the private and federal civilian sectors including the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, FEMA, and the Veterans Health Administration. Before entering consulting, he worked in the private sector as product development manager at a New York City based risk financing firm. Since 2003, Mr. Keegan has been a reviewer for Association of Government Accountant’s Certificate of Excellence in Accountability Reporting (CEAR)© program, keeping abreast of the most recent developments in authoritative standards affecting federal accounting, financial reporting and performance measurement. He is also a member of APPAM, the NYU Alumni Association, and the Data Center & Cloud Talent, USA. He holds masters in public administration and management from New York University and was the founder of its DC alumni group as well as previous treasurer of the NYU graduate school’s alumni board. || As a comparative political economy scholar, Paula Ganga uses her knowledge of advanced statistical methodologies, seven languages and travel to over 40 countries to examine the economic outcomes of political institutions, state-market interactions, the political actors driving the process and the inequalities between the winners and losers of this process. Ganga is particularly interested in populism and economic nationalism, inequality and economic development, energy and environmental policy, corruption and transparency, and democratic backsliding. At Duke Kunshan she teaches various courses in political economy, democracy and authoritarianism. Ganga has published work on the economic consequences of illiberalism, foreign aid, Russian nationalization, corruption and energy politics in Eurasia. She is currently working on a book manuscript dealing with the political determinants of switches between privatization and nationalization in Eastern Europe and beyond. This research bears directly on how we view the link between democracy and market capitalism, economic consequences of populism, rising illiberalism in recent political transitions and state capitalism. Ganga holds a bachelor of arts in political science from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, in her hometown of Iasi in Romania, as well as an M.Sc. in global governance and diplomacy from Oxford University, where she was a Chevening fellow. After completing her Ph.D. at Georgetown University she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University's Harriman Institute, a postdoctoral fellow at the Skalny Center for Polish and Central Eastern European Studies with Rochester University and a George F. Kennan short-term scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.