Jo Anne Schneider – Full Bio
Jo Anne Schneider is an applied social scientist with 28 years of post-doctoral experience. A researcher and policy developer, she also is a practitioner known for translating research into systems change and service delivery programs supported in partnership with communities, government, foundations and non-profits. Adept at organizing and working with diverse coalitions to develop and implement projects. Overall, her post PhD professional career includes a mix of twenty years applied research and consulting, six years as a non-profit administrator, three years in federal policy positions, and five years in full time, tenure track academic positions. Prior to completing her PhD, she received initial training in quantitative analysis while working at WESTAT and worked her way through graduate school performing both quantitative and qualitative research while completing an interdisciplinary policy and urban studies Phd in social anthropology at Temple University.
In addition to serving as Principal at Chrysalis Collaborations, she is currently an Associate Research Professor in Anthropology at George Washington University, a position she has held since 2005. Her previous positions include serving as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow working with National Cancer Institute to translate research into practice (2003-2005).
As an applied social scientist, she has worked with communities and non-profit organizations to analyze programs and agency systems, develop needs assessments, and perform evaluations. She has consistently used research to develop trainings, technical assistance, model programs, public policy recommendations, and advise government and private organizations on such issues as disabilities, community development, social welfare support systems, workforce development, welfare to work, immigrant and refugee programs, education, health education and health access. Through two policy fellowships (American Anthropological Association Congressional Fellowship 1989-1990, AAAS NIH fellowship 2003-2005) and participation in policy efforts at the state and local level, she has participated in policy development on a range of social welfare, health and migration issues. She also has direct experience in non-profit management, developing and overseeing programs for at-risk populations as Assistant Director at Institute for the Study of Civic Values and director of the Bridges project, an intergroup relations and educational enrichment project.
She concentrates on disparities, at-risk and other marginalized populations including people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, low income families, at-risk youth, dislocated workers, unemployed workers, people of color, and first generation college educated professionals. Her work examines systems and programs for disability, workforce development(WIOA,JTPA), reemployment, postsecondary education/training, income and food security (TANF and earlier welfare programs, SNAP, WIC), health insurance access, health care, youth development, economic and community development and other related human services systems. Her studies often include labor force analysis, civic health indicators, and government data on access to and use of workforce investment (vocational rehabilitation, government workforce investment, unemployment, private sector education/training), welfare, social supports (SSI/SSDI, developmental disabilities services, housing, food security, transportation), and health insurance programs (Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP).
Much of her work has focused on the dynamic among government, nonprofits, faith communities, and the disparities communities themselves in providing supports and opportunities for individuals and families. Since 2011, she has focused on the dynamic between workforce development systems, employers and people with disabilities in order to understand and improve employment and social supports to foster full integration and independence for people with disabilities. Her 2006 book, Social Capital and Welfare Reform[link to amazon page], analyzed the implementation of TANF and the Workforce Investment Act, evaluated policy implementation in two states and three counties, and provided both policy and program design recommendations to build community capacity to support families. This project contributed to changes of Pennsylvania’s TANF plan. More recent studies of the unemployed (2011-2012) highlighted the impact of high levels of long term unemployment on older, educated, middle class workers on employment, retirement and housing systems, as well as local communities.
She has also been involved in refugee resettlement and integration of immigrants and refugees into the U.S. for most of her career. Starting with her award winning PhD dissertation on resettlement of Polish and Soviet Jewish refugees in Philadelphia and an internship with Refugee Policy Group, she has followed the development and implementation of refugee policy at the federal and local level. This work continued with both immigrants and refugees when she co-led the Philadelphia site of a national Ford foundation study Changing Relations: Newcomers and Established Residents looking at the interactions between post 1964 immigrants and refugees on U.S. communities (See Reshaping Ethnic and Racial Relations: Immigrants in a Divided City (with Judith Goode)[link to amazon book]. She continued research and practice projects with refugees and immigrants throughout her career, including designing resettlement programs, developing welfare to work programs that included programming modified for refugee populations at ISCV, and multiple workshops on refugee resettlement. In 2015, she contributed her combined expertise on refugees to development of policy recommendations and model programs for social integration and workforce development for European refugees as part of the Global Young Academy[link] event Fresh Eyes on the Refugee Crisis.
Her healthcare and public health research follows similar themes. All of her studies of disparities populations have examined the impact of health insurance access, health care access, and quality of care on families and individuals. She is particularly knowledgeable about the impact of Medicare and Medicaid implementation on immigrants, refugees, low income families and people with disabilities. Her health policy work has compared the U.S. health care system to other countries. As an AAAS fellow at NCI, she focused on translational research and health dissemination, evaluating Institute health dissemination efforts and proposing a new model for dissemination that was piloted at NCI. She has also worked on several population health projects.
Dr. Schneider has an established reputation and solid working connections with foundations, U.S., Canadian and U.K. government agencies. Funders include the Annie E Casey Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lilly Endowment, Aspen Institute, and National Science Foundation. Government projects have been done with NIH, HHS, DOL, SSA, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, as well as state and local government agencies.
She has produced a wide variety of policy and practitioner briefs, newspaper op-eds, reports and fact sheets and published widely in policy, practitioner and academic journals. She has published two books, edited three journal special issues (see full CV for list). Examples of publications include serving as lead editor for the American Anthropologist special issue on welfare reform (2001); editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ) special issue on faith based organizations (2013), The Role of Social Capital in Building Healthy Communities (Annie E. Casey Foundation,2004); Social Capital and Social Geography (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010), Getting Beyond the Training vs. Work Experience Debate (Women, Politics, and Policy, summer 2005); and special issue editor and author of article on multi-methods ethnography for Research to Practice: An Interdisciplinary Conversation on Research Methods for Non-profits, Special Issue Nonprofit Management and Leadership (July 2006). [David, links to each?]
Her training, workshop, and presentation experience include customized trainings, workshops and webinars for social welfare and human services staff at government and private agencies, community leaders and residents, and researchers. She also has 20 years of college level teaching experience and over 30 years presenting to policy, academic and practitioners audiences on various topics.