2022-2023 Season

2022-2023 Schedule

All of our events will be held virtual unless otherwise indicated.

Date	Location	Presenters
Wed Oct 5, 2022	Virtual Meeting	Skylar Olsen, Chief Economist, Zillow
Wed Nov 2, 2022	Virtual Meeting	Sam Kaplan, Director, Center of Excellence for Global Trade & Supply Chain Management; President at Gittes Global
Wed, Dec 7, 222	Virtual Meeting	Holiday Happy Hour
Wed Feb 1, 2023	Virtual Meeting	Jennie Romich, Director, West Coast Poverty Center PhD, University of Washington
Wed March1, 2023	Virtual Meeting	Vellore Arthi, Asst Professor, Dept of Economics, UC Irvine
Wed April 5, 2023	Virtual Meeting	Steve Lerch, Chief economist at Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council
Wed May 3, 2023	Virtual Meeting	Laurie Trautman, Director, Border Policy Research Institute, WWU / Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Wed June 7, 2023	Virtual Meeting	Holi Urbas, Regional Economist at U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Seattle Municipal Tower (Only Relevant for in-person Lunch Meetings)

Driving

Enter Seattle Municipal Tower Garage off of Sixth Avenue, immediately past Columbia Street.
Upon exiting your car, follow the striped walkway into the building.
Enter from the Parking Area and go through the hallway to the Parking Garage Elevator lobby.
Take the elevator to the Fourth Floor (Main Lobby). Cross lobby from Parking Elevators to Main Building elevators.
There are four separate banks that take you to the upper floors. They are marked above.

Light Rail

Take the Pioneer Square Station Exit
Walk up (east) on James Street
Turn left on 5th Avenue
Entrance to Seattle Municipal Tower will be on 5th and Columbia
There are four separate banks that take you to the upper floors. They are marked above.

Professor Jennie Romich teaches social welfare policy and policy practice classes.
She studies resources and economic well-being in families with an emphasis on low-income workers, household budgets, and families’ interactions with public policy. Her recent projects include research into effective marginal tax rates created by means-tested benefit schedules and the tax system; an investigation of income of families involved with the child welfare system; and mixed-method evaluations of local policy interventions, including the City of the Seattle Paid Safe and Sick Time Ordinance and $15 minimum wage.
Romich serves as faculty director of the West Coast Poverty Center and is an active member of the Center for Studies of Demography and Ecology. She co-leads the national effort on “Reducing Extreme Economic Inequality” for the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare’s Grand Challenges Initiative .
Romich holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics and earned a doctorate in human development and social policy from Northwestern University.
The TALK today is about:
Advancing local economic and demographic research with administrative data"

While city-level minimum wages now cover one in 12 American workers, data limitations impede research on the impact of these local measures. Conventional sources of economic data do not have sufficient small area sample sizes to identify the impacts of local policies, much less create evidence about how local wage mandates might affect subgroups of people who are particularly at risk of exclusion from labor market opportunities. Romich will discuss how the UW Minimum Wage Study developed a uniquely detailed population-level administrative data resource by combining records from different state agencies. She will illustrate the power of this data through applications to the minimum wage and paid leave laws and outline a proposal for a next-generation population data repository.