To be a leading democracy in the information age means producing objective, independent, scientifically grounded, and widely shared quality information on where we are and where we are going, on both an absolute and relative basis, including comparisons to other nations.
David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States
Board of Directors
The State of the USA is fortunate to have an extraordinary group of national leaders from the scientific and statistical communities as its founding Board of Directors. Their long and impressive careers range across the government, business, nonprofit and academic sectors; but they all share a deep commitment to problem-solving and decision-making based on evidence and nonpartisan approaches. They are now in the process of working to expand the Board to include a wider and more diverse range of leading American citizens.
- Vincent Barabba – Chairman
- Kenneth Prewitt – Vice Chair
- Janet L. Norwood
- Christopher (Chris) Hoenig – President and Chief Executive Officer
Vincent Barabba
Chairman
Vincent Barabba is the chairman of Kings County Ventures and the Market Insight Corporation. He retired in 2003 as the general manager, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, General Motors Corporation, where he was responsible for overseeing Corporate Strategic Planning and the Business Decision Support Center.
Mr. Barabba twice served as director of the United States Bureau of the Census and is the only person to have been appointed to that position by presidents of different political parties. Between his government service and GM assignments, he served as the manager of market research for the Xerox Corporation and director of Market Intelligence for Eastman Kodak.
Mr. Barabba was the co-founder of Decision Making Information, which became the Wirthlin Group, and from 1969 to 1973 provided electoral information to political campaigns from city hall to the presidency. In recognition of his performance in the private and public sectors, he was inducted by the Market Research Council into the Market Research Hall of Fame. Mr. Barabba has also received the American Marketing Association’s Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for his leadership in the application of science to the discipline of marketing research, the MIT/GM Henry Grady Weaver Award for individuals who have contributed the most to the advancement of theory and practice (rigor and relevance) in Marketing science, and the Certificate of Distinguished Service for Contribution to the Federal Statistical System from the Office of Management and Budget.
He is the author of Surviving Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Meeting of the Minds (Harvard Business School Press, 1995). He is the co-author of Hearing the Voice of the Market (Harvard Business School Press, 1991) and The 1980 Census: Policy Making Amid Turbulence (Lexington Books, 1983).
Mr. Barabba is a past president and a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has served as U.S. representative to the Population Commission of the United Nations and chairman of the National Research Council Panel to review the statistical program of the National Center for Education Statistics. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.
Kenneth Prewitt
Vice Chair
Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie professor of public affairs, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to that he was dean of the graduate faculty, the New School University in New York, and from 1998, until January 2001, was director of the United States Census Bureau. As head of the Census Bureau, his primary focus was on the operations of Census 2000—often described as the largest peacetime mobilization in history, with a budget of approximately $7.5 billion and a permanent and part-time decennial staff that at its peak was more than 900,000 persons.
He joined government service following a career in higher education and private philanthropy. From 1995 to 1998, he served as the president of the Social Science Research Council, a position he also held from 1979 to 1985. For ten years he was senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, where he directed the International Program to Support Science-Based Development involving activities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He served for five years as the director of the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago. He taught for fifteen years at the University of Chicago, and for shorter periods, taught at Stanford University (where he received his PhD), Washington University (where he received his MA), the University of Nairobi, and Makerere University (Uganda).
Dr. Prewitt is the author or co-author of a dozen books, and 75 contributions to professional journals and edited collections. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Southern Methodist University, a Distinguished Service Award from the New School for Social Research, The Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany, the Charles E. Merriam Award from the American Political Science Association, and numerous awards associated with his directorship of the Census Bureau. Dr. Prewitt has published Politics and Science in Census Taking, and is co-author of a second book scheduled for publication [January 2008] on the 2000 census that treats civic mobilization and privacy concerns in the American public.
He has been elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on the board of numerous professional and nonprofit organizations, and on advisory boards to the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the National Science Foundation, as well as universities and private foundations.
Born March 16, 1936, in Alton, Ill., Dr. Prewitt has two children by his first marriage, and is now married to Susan Vogel, an art historian and film-maker.
Janet L. Norwood
Janet L. Norwood serves as counselor at the New York Conference Board. She chairs two congressionally mandated studies—a National Academy of Sciences review of Title VI and Fulbright-Hays International Programs as well as an Academy of Public Administration study on the extent of the off-shoring of employment and its economic and social effects. She has served on several corporate and nonprofit boards and currently is on the Board of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
From 1992 to 1999, Ms. Norwood was a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute, where she worked on statistical policy and labor market issues. President Bush named her chair of the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation in 1992, and President Clinton reappointed her to that post in 1993. She served as U.S. Commissioner of Labor Statistics from 1979 to 1992, having been appointed by Presidents Carter and Reagan. Ms. Norwood has testified often before congressional committees, has written articles, monographs, and chapters of books on statistical and labor market issues, as well as a book, Organizing to Count: Change in the Federal Statistical System, published in 1995.
Ms. Norwood earned a BA from Rutgers University and an MA and PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She has honorary degrees from Rutgers, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and Florida International universities. Ms. Norwood was designated a National Associate at the National Academies for her contributions to the National Research Council, and is the recipient of the National Public Service Award, the Elmer B. Staats Award, Dickinson College's Benjamin Rush Award, the American Statistical Association's Founders Award, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences Distinguished Service Award, the Labor Department's Philip Arnow Award, and the Elizabeth Scott Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies for her furtherance of the careers of women in statistics.
She has served on committees at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and American universities, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and the University of California at Berkeley. Norwood also has served as chair of the ILO International Conference of Labor Statisticians and as chair of several OECD committees. Norwood is a past president and fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member and past vice president of the International Statistical Institute, a fellow of the National Association of Business Economists and of the National Academy of Public Administration, and was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. She is a past president of the Cosmos Club and of the Consortium of Social Science Associations.
Christopher (Chris) Hoenig
President and Chief Executive Officer
Chris Hoenig is a leader with a reputation for defining and solving tough, high-value issues and opportunities. His career is dedicated to producing fundamental innovations in how we understand and improve our collective problem-solving capabilities.
Over 25 years, his experience has ranged from transformational leadership to technical innovation; from expert advisor to widely published author; from private enterprise to public service; and from small-scale entrepreneurship to national and global leadership.
Currently, he is serving as president and CEO of The State of The USA, Inc. This is a new nonprofit endeavor, developed under the auspices of The National Academy of Sciences. Its mission is to use quality information and advanced technology to educate the American people on the status and progress of the United States. The initiative is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett, Rockefeller, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, F.B. Heron and Carnegie Corporation of New York foundations.
Mr. Hoenig has worked with leading organizations in the private and public sectors—first as a consultant with McKinsey & Co., then as a managing director at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and most recently as a Vice-President of Strategy at IBM. These jobs catalyzed an ongoing body of research and theoretical development, first published in The Problem Solving Journey (recently translated into Korean and Chinese).
Mr. Hoenig has helped to define the major issues facing society in the 21st century. This began with work for the U.S. Congress defining challenges for the United States, which led to the creation of The State of the USA. He also conceived and helped lead the Global Project on Measuring Societal Progress with the OECD. This resulted in the Istanbul Declaration at the 2007 World Forum, attended by delegates from 120 nations.
In the arena of innovation, he created one of the world’s first commercial online information services, Transpotel. This was followed by the Solution System technology developed at Exolve, Inc. He recently led the development of Societal Intelligence at IBM. And he is currently collaborating to improve large-scale Social Reasoning.
His formal education includes undergraduate work (BA) in history from Yale University and two graduate degrees in International Politics, Law and Economics from Cambridge University (M.Phil.) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.).