Meet Our New Chapters & Membership Leaders
The Scholars Strategy Network is excited to announce six additions to our leadership team advising and overseeing SSN chapters and the membership process. Please join us in celebrating these outstanding individuals who will enable SSN to better support our chapters and members in informing policy and strengthening democracy.
New Directors of Chapter Development and Member Engagement
On the SSN national staff, we are thrilled to announce two new Directors. Pam Metz is joining SSN's management team as the new Director of Chapter Development. In this role, she supports SSN's nearly 40 regional chapters to build communities of publicly engaged scholars and inform local policy. Danielle Mulligan is SSN's new Director of Member Engagement. In this role, she is responsible for fostering an engaged and thriving network of scholars across the country.
SSN Chapter Advisory Council
As the SSN chapter network passes the ten-year mark, and the number of chapters quickly grows to nearly 40 groups nationwide, the SSN Board has decided to establish a new Chapter Advisory Council. This group, made up of four former and current chapter leaders, will support chapters and chapter leaders in a number of ways, including providing advice to leaders who want to workshop specific challenges, helping recruit new leaders, developing and advising on chapter award criteria, providing feedback on annual chapter work plans, and making recommendations about chapters program guidelines.
The inaugural Council members are Jim Curry (Utah chapter), Amy Fried (Maine chapter), Barbara Risman (Chicagoland chapter) and Deondra Rose (North Carolina chapter). Between them, they bring a variety of areas of expertise, experiences, and energies to better support SSN’s chapters. Council chair Amy Fried says:
“Helping chapters thrive and sharing information about what works well is critical to SSN’s current operations and future. We look forward to working with chapter leaders and SSN staff.”
Meet the New Chapters and Membership Management Team
Pamela Metz is Director of Chapter Development at Scholars Strategy Network, where she supports SSN's nearly 40 regional chapters to build communities of publicly engaged scholars and inform local policy. Before joining SSN, Pam served as founding Associate Director of the Harvard Inequality & Social Policy program from 1998–2021. Pam received her BA in Political Science from Wellesley College and was a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University, where she held an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Harvard MacArthur Fellowship.
As the Director of Member Engagement, Danielle is responsible for fostering an engaged and thriving network of scholars across the country. This includes supporting scholars as they translate their research into policy documents as part of SSN's membership process and connecting existing members with their local SSN chapters and with opportunities that can deepen their policy and media work. Since joining SSN in 2017, Danielle has also worked on the policy team and as the Associate Director of Chapters.
Meet the Chapter Advisory Council
Curry is a Utah SSN chapter co-leader and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah. He studies the influence of parties and leaders within the U.S. Congress, and the way information and expertise shape congressional policymaking.
Fried is a member of the SSN Steering Committee, a former Maine SSN chapter co-leader, and the John Mitchell Nickerson Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine. She teaches and writes about citizens’ political involvements and values, and is currently examining how conservatives promoted distrust in government in the Tea Party age.
Rose is a North Caroline SSN chapter co-leader and Associate Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and History at Duke University. Her research focuses on the impact that federal social policies have on equality in the United States.
Risman is a former Chicagoland SSN chapter co-leader and a College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her teaching and research focuses on women’s status in society, and the changing politics and policies around gender and sexual inequality.