Non-Resident Scholars
Adam Bloomfield
Dr. Bloomfield is a Senior Economist in the FDIC’s Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection. His research interests span household finance, public economics, labor economics, small business dynamics, and financial intermediation. Previously, Adam was an Economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he co-led the SEC’s Retail and Behavioral Finance Working Group and served as an economic advisor to the U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC). He is a special sworn researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau.
He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in applied economics and an M.A. in statistics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as well as a B.S. in decision theory from Duke University.
Ali Khawar
Ali Khawar comes to Georgetown CRI following a distinguished career at the US Department of Labor that spanned four Democratic and Republican Presidential Administrations. During the Biden Administration, he was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary of the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the agency responsible for overseeing the approximately four million retirement, health, and other job-based benefit plans that serve America’s workers, retirees, and their families. In that role, he led the agency’s policy and regulatory work, interagency collaborations, international engagements, and played a key role in strategic and organizational management issues. Ali had several different positions over his government career, including as an EBSA Investigator, EBSA’s Chief of Staff, and a Counselor to the Secretary of Labor. He was also a Bureau Member for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Working Party on Private Pensions and the Vice President of the International Organization of Pension Supervisors. In addition to being a frequent public speaker, Ali has played a role in every major retirement, health, and other ERISA benefits-related rule or legislation of the last fifteen-plus years. More recently, Ali is the founder of FCP, LLC, a company that offers strategic and benefits-related consulting.
John Mitchem
John Mitchem is Principal of JM3 Projects – a global consultancy providing intelligence, market analysis and thought leadership projects for global financial stakeholders.
Prior to this, at State Street Corporation in Boston and London, he served for 15 years in industry affairs, public policy, executive communications and thought leadership positions. Earlier in his career, John served as a senior staffer at the United Nations headquarters in New York, researching and writing about development economics, security issues and diplomatic negotiations.
In 2022, together with Jorik van Zanden of Utrecht University, Netherlands, he founded Jasper Forum – a global retirement finance discussion that has organized more than 25 online and live sessions with more than 2,000 discussants. John collaborated with Bob Reynolds, CEO of Putnam Investments on his book, “From Here to Security: How Workplace Savings Can Keep America’s Promise (McGraw-Hill Professional).
Manita Rao
Dr. Manita Rao is a Senior Strategic Policy Advisor in financial security at the AARP Public Policy Institute, specializing in pensions and retirement policy, public finance, and urban economics. Before joining AARP, she was an assistant professor of public policy where she designed and taught courses on policy analysis, empirical research, and public finance. She has also been a senior research associate in international development, where she helped expand access to banking services.
Dr. Rao has published academic research in several peer-reviewed journals on issues of fiscal policy, pensions, economic development, and urban growth. She is a member of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the National Association of Business Economists.
She holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Southern California, a master’s in policy and evaluation from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a master’s in social policy from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.