ALBERTO MARTINI, Progetto Valutazione (practitioner)
I accept the honor of being considered for election to the APPAM Policy Council with one main goal in mind: to increase the reach of APPAM throughout the international community so that other countries may benefit from the unique mix of expertise the association represents, from teaching policy analysis to conducting rigorous impact evaluations. I would work to extend the presence and representation of international members in APPAM. While non-US institutions now make up about 10% of APPAM’s institutional members (6 are in Asia, 4 in Europe, 2 in Canada and 1 in Mexico), none of the Policy Council members is currently employed by a non-US institution. I am currently director of a small evaluation research organization in Torino, Italy and also Associate Professor of Statistics and Policy Evaluation at the Università del Piemonte Orientale. I earned a Ph.D. in Economics in 1988 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison while working for the Institute for Research on Poverty. Between 1988 and 1993 I was a Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in Washington, DC, and worked on issues related to disability and food security policy. I attended my first APPAM conference in San Francisco in 1990. In 1993 I joined the Urban Institute as Senior Research Associate and participated in the “Assessing the New Federalism" project. During those years, I also consulted with the World Bank for the design and implementation of household surveys in transition countries. In 1998 I returned to Italy to apply there what I learned in the U.S. In 2001-02 I served as president of the Italian Evaluation Association. I would welcome this opportunity to contribute to the strengthening of APPAM’s international network of relationships.