About the Authors
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As the Senior Research and Policy Associate, Jose is responsible for providing quantitative and statistical analysis for the Economic Opportunity Program. He has over 10 years of experience working on Civil Rights, Census advocacy and Socio Demographic analysis.
Prior to working at Demos, Jose was the Vice President for Policy at the National Institute for Latino Policy (NILP), where he was in charge of the program priorities for NILP. He has worked extensively on Census and Voting rights issues and led a National Latino Data Center. He has acted as Chair of the Steering Committee of the Census Information Center which counsels the Census Bureau on issues of underrepresented communities and assists in informing marginalized communities on products from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Mr. Garcia has spoken on television and on the radio and has been quoted in national, local, and ethnic newspapers and journals including The New York Post, Daily News, Orlando Sentinel, NY1, Univision, Telemundo, Univision and El Diario. Mr. Garcia received his Masters in Social Work with a concentration in Social Policy from the University of Connecticut where he received the Alumni Award and his Bachelors from Dayton University where he received the O'Reilly award for Service Leadership.
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James is a Senior Fellow at Demos. He is also co-editor (with Chuck Collins) of Inequality.org, an online research center for journalists, teachers and concerned citizens.
As a journalist, he has written for the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, among other publications. He is the co-editor of Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences, a book of connected essays by (among others) Bill Moyers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Meizhu Lui, Miles Rapoport, and Jim Wallis.
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Cindy is currently pursuing a PhD in Health Services Research & Health Policy at Emory University in Atlanta. Previously, and while working on Up to Our Eyeballs, she was the Federal Affairs Coordinator for the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, where she managed Congressional outreach around the program's priority areas. While at Demos, she also conducted research on medical debt that was covered by NBC Nightly News, The New York Times, Congressional Quarterly, and other publications.
Cindy has several years of public policy experience at both the state and national levels, and holds an M.A. in Public Policy with a concentration in Women's Studies from The George Washington University and a B.A. in Political Science from Emory University.
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Tamara Draut is the Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos and the author of Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead.
Tamara leads the organization’s research, policy and advocacy work on issues related to economic security and mobility. Her research focuses on the growing debt burdens facing low- and middle-income households, and more broadly the challenges confronting households trying to work or educate their way into the middle class.
Tamara's book and research has been covered extensively by dozens of newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Her writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The American Prospect and The Boston Review. She is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, and Fox News.