Meet Your 2024 PAPOR Executive Council

President
Danell Brewster

Danell Brewster leads the Survey and Applied Research Section at the California State Employment Development Department. Danell oversees and conducts surveys and other research projects focused on customer needs and program outcomes. Danell holds a Master of Public Policy and Administration degree, a post graduate Certificate of Collaborative Governance, and a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Sacramento State

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Vice President / President-Elect
Ashley Kirzinger

Ashley Kirzinger, Ph.D., is Director of Survey Methodology and Associate Director of Public Opinion and Survey Research at KFF. She has been serving on PAPOR Council for the past several years as Councilor-at-Large and is excited to move into this new position. She previously served as AAPOR Standards Chair, co-chair of the AAPOR Transparency Initiative, and the 2020 AAPOR Code Review Committee. As the only PAPOR member in Maine, Ashley frequently mutters “west coast, best coast” as she walks around town with her wife and dogs.

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Membership Chair
Rico Neumann

Rico Neumann is a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Language and Communication at Technical University of Berlin (Germany) where he examines how social cohesion is negotiated and constituted in different discourses in civil society. More broadly, his research interests lie at the intersection of public opinion, political communication, and intergroup phenomena, and he teaches classes in empirical research methods and media effects. His work has appeared in journals such as Mass Communication and Society, International Journal of Communication, Social Indicators Research, and International Journal of Public Opinion Research. He holds a B.A. from the University of Leipzig (Germany), an M.A. from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Previously, Rico served on PAPOR Council as President (2022), Vice President (2021), and Student Representative (2020). When not absorbed by survey data and research projects, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and spending time with his wife and daughter.

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Conference Chair
Phillip Meng

Phillip Meng is a consultant at the Atlantic Council. Previously, he served as associate conference chair (2023) and student representative (2022) of PAPOR. He is interested in public perceptions of foreign and economic policy, and has interned on the public opinion team of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs and the business policy team of the Bipartisan Policy Center. As a student at the University of Washington, Phillip founded a student polling/data analytics group and edited the Jackson School Journal of International Studies.

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Associate Conference Chair
Shannon Schumacher

Shannon Schumacher, Ph.D., is a Senior Survey Analyst for the Public Opinion and Survey Research team at KFF. At KFF, she has worked on the KFF Health Tracking Poll, the COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, and survey partnerships with news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times. Prior to joining KFF, she was a Research Associate at Pew Research Center working on Global Attitudes and Trends and previously worked as a Survey Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau. Shannon received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish from the University of San Diego.

Councilor-at-Large, Newsletter Chair
Tiffany Neman

Tiffany S. Neman is a survey statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies. Her research interests include interviewer-respondent interactions, survey nonresponse, panel attrition, and spatial econometrics, and her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Public Opinion Quarterly, Survey Practice, and Field Methods. Tiffany recently received her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and holds a B.A. in sociology from UCLA. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

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Councilor-at-Large, Webmaster
Matthew Foy

Matthew Foy is a researcher in the Survey and Applied Research Section at the Employment Development Department (EDD). At the EDD, he focuses on survey design and implementation, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods. He spent several years at the Institute for Social Research at California State University, Sacramento, where he primarily worked on telephone surveys, program evaluations, and panel research. Matt has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Sociology from California State University, Sacramento.

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Councilor-at-Large, Student Representative
Justine Orgel

Justine Orgel is a third-year student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Political Science with minors in Survey Research and Data Analytics and English. During her time at Penn, Justine has been involved with the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) and participated in various projects through the program. She has conducted research on the relationships between the proximity of college campuses and political outcomes, assisted in election data collection for NBC, taught data science courses, and most recently, has been building a polling aggregator to assist in predicting the 2024 presidential election. This past summer, she was an intern at SurveyMonkey where she assisted in their media projects and built a dashboard compiling all past questions. Justine is a San Francisco native, so getting involved with PAPOR is a great opportunity to bring her academic interests closer to home. She is excited to be a part of this community as she continues to explore public opinion research.

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Past-President
Erin Pinkus

Erin Pinkus is a UX Researcher at HubSpot focusing on automation. Prior to joining HubSpot, Erin spent several years at SurveyMonkey primarily working on web-based questionnaire design and storytelling through public opinion data to serve media and business partners. Before that, she worked on telephone and mail surveys for state level issues impacting ages 50+ in AARP’s State Research department. She holds a Master’s in Psychology from American University and earned her Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Criminology from UC Irvine. Erin formerly served on PAPOR Council as President (2023), Vice President (2022), Conference Chair (2020-21), and Associate Conference Chair (2019).

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Treasurer
Benn Messer

Benn Messer is a survey statistician with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the US Department of Energy. He is involved in protesting the changes and improvements to EIA’s energy surveys. He spent nearly nine years with Research Into Action and Opinion Dynamics doing consulting, evaluation, market research, and fielding dozens of surveys in the energy sector. Before that, Benn earned a PhD in Sociology from Washington State University, where he studied survey methods under Dr. Don Dillman. He also served on the PAPOR council from 2011 to 2018 and has been an active member of AAPOR since 2009. Benn lives in Portland, OR with his wife, two dogs, and a cat, where they enjoy lots of outdoor recreation, live music, and good food.

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Secretary
Meagan Doll

Meagan Doll is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, where she conducts research on news, public opinion, and conflict, with a regional specialization in East Africa. Using qualitative, experimental, and survey-based methods, her work has appeared in journals, such as Mass Communication and Society, the International Journal of Press/Politics, and Journalism Studies. Meagan is a Fellow at the Center for Journalism, Media, and Democracy at the University of Washington and former assistant director of the African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Washington and a B.A. in Journalism & Mass Communication from UW-Madison.

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Student Paper Competition Chair
Gilad Amitai

Gilad Amitai is a Data Scientist at 2K Games focusing on mobile applications. Prior to that, he was a Research Scientist at SurveyMonkey using cutting-edge methodology on public opinion data for business and media partners. Gilad holds a Master’s in Statistical Science from Duke University where his research focused on differential privacy, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Statistics from the University of Washington, Seattle, where he used surveys in analyzing the makeup of social networks. He previously presented his work on adaptive head-to-head ranking methods at PAPOR and the national AAPOR conference.

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Councilor-at-Large, Short Course Chair
Bob Davis

Bob Davis is the president and owner of the California-based multi-mode data collection research company, Davis Research. Davis Research is a GSA certified small business with experience delivering 508 compliant web surveys and phone surveys for various state and federal agencies. When he is not geeking out on public opinion research, Bob enjoys parenting, traveling, reading, hiking, and cooking. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from UC San Diego and Masters in Business Administration from the Anderson School of UCLA.

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Councilor-at-Large, Sponsorship Chair
Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson graduated from BYU with an M.S. in Statistics. He spent 15 years working in market research with a wide variety of experience, including phone surveys, online surveys, and passively collected data. He loves finding innovative ways to combine behavioral and survey data with a specialty in discrete choice models. He has volunteered and served on committees in AAPOR at both the local and regional level. His research efforts have been featured at AAPOR, ESOMAR, ARF, Insights Association, and Sawtooth conferences. He is most proud of his wife and two sons and loves playing games with them.

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Councilor-at-Large, Special Events Chair
Samantha Finley

Samantha Finley is a Research Data Specialist at the California State Employment Development Department (EDD). Her experience is primarily with survey and program evaluation research. Samantha has experience in survey planning and designing, sampling, analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data, as well as survey and statistical methodologies. Samantha holds an MA in Sociology from Humboldt State University and a BA from University of California, Riverside.

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