Our team brings together exper­tise in anthro­pol­ogy, pub­lic pol­icy, and com­pu­ta­tional social  sci­ences, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy, finance, and defense to bear on the study of global power and influ­ence.  Team mem­bers include the fol­low­ing individuals.

Janine R. Wedel, uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor in the School of Pub­lic Pol­icy, is a pio­neer in apply­ing anthro­po­log­i­cal insights to top­ics dom­i­nated by polit­i­cal sci­ence and eco­nom­ics. The project draws on her exper­tise as an anthro­pol­o­gist study­ing power net­works in east­ern Europe and the United States and these books: Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Under­mine Democ­racy, Gov­ern­ment, and the Free Mar­ket; Con­fronting Cor­rup­tion, Build­ing Account­abil­ity: Lessons From the World of Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Advis­ing (with Lloyd J. Dumas and Greg Call­man); and Col­li­sion and Col­lu­sion: The Strange Case of West­ern Aid to East­ern Europe.  A pub­lic intel­lec­tual, Wedel has con­tributed con­gres­sional tes­ti­mony and analy­sis pieces to more than a dozen major out­lets, includ­ing the New York Times, Finan­cial Times, Wall Street Jour­nal Europe, Wash­ing­ton Post, Wash­ing­ton Times, National Inter­est, Nation, Politico, Salon, Los Ange­les Times, Boston Globe, and Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, and has been a fea­tured colum­nist in The Huff­in­g­ton Post.  Win­ner of the pres­ti­gious 2001 Grawe­meyer Award for Ideas Improv­ing World Order (pre­vi­ous win­ners include Mikhail Gor­bachev and Samuel Hunt­ing­ton), Wedel is cur­rently at work on a book expos­ing new forms of cor­rup­tion in pub­lic pol­icy ten­ta­tively set for 2014 to be pub­lished by Pega­sus Books.

Maciej Latek, a researcher in the Kras­now Insti­tute for Advanced Stud­ies at George Mason Uni­ver­sity is a mod­eler with exper­tise in eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, secu­rity, sta­tis­tics, oper­a­tions research and data min­ing. He spe­cial­izes in build­ing ana­lyt­i­cal tools, deci­sion sup­port sys­tems, and multi-agent sim­u­la­tions. He is also adept at data­base con­struc­tion and graph­ics.  Latek holds a Ph.D. in Com­pu­ta­tional Social Sci­ence from George Maso­nUni­ver­sity and a M.Sc. in Quan­ti­ta­tive Meth­ods from the War­saw School of Eco­nom­ics.  His doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion was enti­tled ”On Bounded Ratio­nal­ity in Multi-Agent Envi­ron­ments.” He describes multi-agent sim­u­la­tion as “the core of the ana­lyt­i­cal and deci­sion sup­port tools I build to help deci­sion mak­ers to gain insight into the prob­lems they face; to design poli­cies, plans, pro­ce­dures and pro­grams and to eval­u­ate their effectiveness.”

Anne L. Wash­ing­ton, pro­fes­sor in the School of Pub­lic Pol­icy at George Mason Uni­ver­sity, is an expert in finance and open gov­ern­ment. After work­ing for soft­ware devel­op­ment firms includ­ing the Claris Soft­ware divi­sion of Apple Com­put­ers, she worked for Bar­clays Global Investors, as well as for Wells Fargo Nikko Invest­ment Advi­sors in mul­ti­ple tech­nol­ogy
and cor­po­rate train­ing posi­tions. Before com­plet­ing her PhD, she was with the Con­gres­sional Research Ser­vice at the Library of Con­gress. She holds a Bach­e­lors of Arts in com­puter sci­ence from Brown Uni­ver­sity and a Mas­ters in Library Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence (MLIS) from Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity. She received a PhD in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Man­age­ment from The
George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity School of Busi­ness.  Her cur­rent research projects inves­ti­gate gov­ern­ment trans­parency,  par­lia­men­tary tech­nol­ogy, data inno­va­tion and the finan­cial crisis.

Julia L. E. Pfaff, an adjunct pro­fes­sor at George Mason Uni­ver­sity, is an expert on the mil­i­tary  and skilled project man­ager.  She holds an M.A. degree from the School of Pub­lic Pol­icy.  Pfaff is an Army vet­eran with over 20-years of man­age­ment expe­ri­ence in the gov­ern­ment and non­profit sec­tors. As the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the National Mil­i­tary Fam­ily Asso­ci­a­tion (NMFA), she led the tran­si­tion of the 35-year-old orga­ni­za­tion from a vol­un­teer man­aged orga­ni­za­tion to a pro­fes­sion­ally man­aged one  with an active board lead­er­ship and a four-star rat­ing from Char­ity Nav­i­ga­tor for finan­cial effi­ciency and orga­ni­za­tional capac­ity.  She served on the busi­ness fac­ulty of the Aus­tralian Col­lege of Kuwait, where she devel­oped and taught a wide range of busi­ness related subjects.

Matthew Dickert is a Pol­icy Fel­low for the George Mason Uni­ver­sity Shadow Influ­ence Project.  A grad­u­ate of Beloit Col­lege and George Mason Uni­ver­sity, School of Pub­lic Pol­icy, Dick­ert serves as a research spe­cial­ist help­ing to over­see finan­cial analy­sis and eco­nomic foren­sics.  He pro­vides insights on cur­rent indus­try research foci involv­ing cap­i­tal flows, infor­ma­tion asym­me­tries, finan­cial inno­va­tions, and incen­tive struc­tures.  Dick­ert pro­vides guid­ance on the report­ing of pub­lic sec­tor pen­sion plan assets and on the scope of fidu­ciary respon­si­bil­i­ties fun­da­men­tal in a public-private retire­ment plan sys­tem. Dick­ert has a back­ground in facil­i­tat­ing eco­nomic mod­el­ing exer­cises for mul­ti­ple insti­tu­tional stake­hold­ers and pro­vid­ing guid­ance on deliv­er­ing finan­cial instruc­tion to diverse con­stituen­cies.  He has a diverse set of research skills, acquired while track­ing Mutual Fund mar­ket trends at the Invest­ment Com­pany Insti­tute, and exper­tise liais­ing with pub­lic reg­u­la­tory author­i­ties and pri­vate sec­tor actors on the dynam­ics and impli­ca­tions of mar­ket events.