The Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program is at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The director is William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor. His many books include (as co-author) Good Kids From Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context. Contact through administrative assistant, […]

The Institute on Assets and Social Policy is at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. The director is Thomas Shapiro, who is also Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at Brandeis’ Heller School for Social Policy and Management. He is the author of The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality and co-author of Black Wealth/ […]

The Institute for Research on Poverty is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lawrence Berger, chair of the social work doctoral program, is director. He is a co-author of Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America’s Children in Comparative Perspective and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality (2009).

The Institute for Policy Research is at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. James Rosenbaum chairs the Poverty, Race and Inequality Program.

The Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development is at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Claudia Coulton and Rob Fischer are co-directors.

Jane Vennard is a United Church of Christ pastor and retreat leader. She is the author of Praying With Body and Soul: A Way to Intimacy With God. She lives in Denver.

Ken Wilson is senior pastor at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, Mich., which encourages its members to make fixed-hour prayers, an unusual thing for a nondenominational church to do.

The Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity is at the University of North Carolina. Gene Nichol, a law professor at the university, is director.

Jim Mullin-Norgaard teaches Celtic Body Prayers at his retreat center in Beaver Island, Mich.