The Humphrey School of Public Affairs is pleased to announce several new faculty members who will join the School in the coming months.
Linda E. Méndez-Barrientos will become an associate professor in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) area, effective in late August. She comes to us from the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver, where she directed the Environmental Justice and Policy Research Lab. She also served as an environmental policy analyst with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Her interdisciplinary research bridges environmental science — particularly water and groundwater management — with public administration scholarship to examine the effectiveness of climate adaptations and institutional reforms. Her work spans the American West, South Africa, Peru, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Méndez-Barrientos earned her PhD in ecology from the University of California, Davis, and MSc degrees from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Montpellier SupAgro in France.
Marina Mileo Gorzig will join the School as an assistant professor in the social policy and policy analysis area in late August. Mileo Gorzig is an equity-focused quantitative researcher with more than a decade of experience conducting policy-relevant research in employment, health and housing. She has expertise in field experiments, quasi-experimental design and analysis of large administrative, census and survey datasets. Originally from Minnesota, much of her work focuses on Minneapolis and St. Paul.
She previously served as a researcher and task lead at Mathematica, where she worked on evaluations and led quantitative research for multiple federal agencies. She is currently a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has held positions at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota. She holds a PhD in public policy from Duke University, an MS in economics from Tufts University and a BA in economics from Earlham College.
Jim Schowalter will become a senior fellow in public finance and budgeting, effective June 29. He brings more than two decades of financial leadership experience across state government and the nonprofit sector. He served as commissioner of Minnesota Management and Budget under two governors, one Republican and one Democrat, where he played a central role in navigating the state's largest budget deficit in 2011 and largest surplus in 2023, helping the state recapture its AAA credit rating. He has also served as CEO of the Minnesota Council of Health Plans and senior vice president at HealthPartners.
In his senior fellow role, Schowalter will provide curriculum leadership in public finance and budgeting, and support the Humphrey School's executive education and mid-career Master of Public Affairs programs. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Jonathan Foley, a world-renowned environmental scientist and sustainability expert, joined us as a senior fellow in the STEP area in March. Foley is executive director of Project Drawdown, the world's leading guide to science-based climate solutions. In his senior fellow role, he will help lead the Advancing Climate Solutions. Now. initiative and develop new climate leadership programming.
He previously served as founding director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, where he held the McKnight Presidential Chair, and led the California Academy of Sciences. He earned his PhD in atmospheric sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I’m pleased to welcome each of these new colleagues, who bring outstanding scholarship and energy to our curriculum and learning community, and who advance the priorities of our strategic plan,” said Dean Nisha Botchwey.
