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Our Mission

The Gender Equity Policy Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing opportunity, fairness, and well-being for all people through research and education that exposes the gender impacts of the policies, processes, and practices of government and business.

What we do

We conduct and publish research on the best practices for advancing gender equity. We analyze and score public policies and business practices to identify the effects on people of all genders, with particular attention to the impacts on groups, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, who have been systematically disadvantaged by discrimination, bias, and structural inequality.

 

By educating policymakers, business leaders, and advocates about the inequities and disparities embedded in seemingly neutral economic and political processes, we provide the tools and knowledge that leaders need to rebalance systems, guarantee equal benefits and opportunities, and secure a just and sustainable future for all Americans.

People

  • Nancy L. Cohen
    President & Founder

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    Nancy L. Cohen is the president and founder of the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Cohen is an award-winning author, historian, and leading national expert on gender and US politics. She holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and is the author of four books including Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America, on anti-feminism and political polarization; Breakthrough: The Making of America’s First Woman President, on women’s political representation in contemporary America; and The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914, on inequality and social conflict in post-Reconstruction America. Cohen’s reporting and commentary has been published in a wide range of outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and she has appeared as a guest on MSNBC, NPR and elsewhere.

  • Mona Shah
    Vice President of External Affairs

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    Mona Shah is a policy and advocacy expert with an extensive background in healthcare, social, and women's issues. A former Staff Director to U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, she has primarily worked with non-profit organizations, philanthropies, and government agencies. Shah earned her JD from the University of Maryland School of Law and her Master of Public Health from Emory University.

  • Alec Clott
    Associate Director of Data Analysis

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    Alec Clott is the Associate Director of Data Analysis for the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Clott has an extensive background in data analytics, research design, and political science. Clott has consulted for international finance organizations, local business networks in the U.S., and non-profit scientific organizations. Clott holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University, where his research focused on the politics of education policy in the Global South.

  • Natalia Vega Varela
    Senior Policy Analyst

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    Natalia Vega Varela is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Natalia has experience in international development, development policy, macroeconomics, and feminist economics analysis. She has collaborated with international institutions, non-profits and think tanks in the U.S. and Mexico. She holds an M.A in International Development from the New School, where she focused her research on inequality and gender development in Latin America and Africa.

  • Michelle Adams
    Professor, Cardozo School of Law/ Vice-Chair, GEPI

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    Michelle Adams is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law. She is a leading national expert on racial justice issues. She is the author of The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022. Her legal scholarship has published in the Yale Law Journal, the California Law Review, the Texas Law Review and other journals. She is currently a commissioner on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States and has served as a board member for the Innocence Project. Adams holds a JD from City University of New York Law School and an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she was honored as the first Charles Hamilton Houston Scholar.

  • Emily Alejos
    Chief Investment Officer, Cartica/ Treasurer, GEPI

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    Emily Alejos is Chief Investment Officer and a Senior Managing Director of Cartica, a majority women-owned investment firm focused on small and mid-cap companies in emerging markets. Alejos is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the Asia Society and the CFA Institute. She is a co-leader and member of the Women’s Circles at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and active in Stanford’s Scholars of Finance, which helps develop the next generation of leaders in finance to lead from a strong grounding in principles and ethics. Alejos holds an MBA and a Certificate in Public Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

  • Stella Maloyan
    Principal, Stellar Strategies, LLC/Board Member, GEPI

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    Stella Maloyan is principal of Stellar Strategies, LLC. Most recently, she served as chief of strategic development at Bush Gottlieb, an innovative union law firm based in Los Angeles. Prior to joining Bush Gottlieb, Maloyan served as Director of Development at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) for 18 years, creating and overseeing the organization’s private fundraising programs and events. In her time at LAANE, Maloyan helped raise over $25 million dollars and created two of the city’s signature events. Previously, she served as a mayoral appointee on the L.A. Convention and Tourism Development Board of Commissioners. Maloyan has served on the boards of the Getty House Foundation, Program for Torture Victims, and the Armenian General Benevolent Union, Southern California District. She holds a Master of Public Administration from California State University, Northridge.

  • Jennifer Piscopo
    Associate Professor of Politics, Occidental College/Sr. Advisor on Global Gender Policy, GEPI

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    Jennifer M. Piscopo is Associate Professor of Politics and Faculty Director of the Center for Research and Scholarship at Occidental College. Her research on representation, gender quotas, and legislative institutions in Latin America has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and many other journals. She is co-editor of The Impact of Gender Quotas (Oxford University Press, 2012). Piscopo has extensive research experience in Latin America and has consulted for international organizations, such as UN Women and the Inter-parliamentary Union, as well as for national governments. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.