Sloan Research Network

Christina Matz is an associate professor at the Boston College School of Social Work and the chair of the Center on Aging & Work. Her research focuses broadly on understanding the changing needs and preferences of older adults and the extent to which programs, policy, and societal institutions are responding to these changes. Dr. Matz-Costa has received the John A. Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Award, a two-year grant to conduct an ecological momentary assessment study that uses iPad minis to collect intensive daily data from adults age 65 and older. Dr. Matz-Costa has co-authored 20 scholarly articles and book chapters and numerous reports and issue briefs, earned acceptance into the Early Career Work and Family Scholars Program (2013-2014) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA)-funded Institute on Aging and Social Work (2012-2014), and currently serves on the steering committee of the Greater-Boston Encore Action Network (G-Bean) and the advisory committee of the Hartford Center of Excellence in Geriatric Social Work at Boston College.

Jacquelyn B. James, PhD, founded the Sloan Research Network on Aging & Work, currently serves as a senior advisor, and previously co-directed the Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Currently, she is serving as senior advisor to the Network and member of the Steering Committee. She was the principal investigator for "Solidifying the Sloan Research Network on Aging & Work as a Living Legacy" funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 2014-2022. Now retired, her research has focused on the meaning and experience of work, gender roles and stereotypes, adult development, and most recently, perceptions of older workers and emerging retirement issues. She and her colleagues have published numerous articles, opinion pieces, and five edited books. Over the last year, she has participated in a committee sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine (and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation) to produce a consensus report, Understanding the Aging Workforce and Employment at Older Ages, due out this spring. Dr. James is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She is also past president of the Society for the Study of Human Development and serves on the editorial board of Work, Aging & Retirement.  She can be reached at jamesjc@bc.edu

Kendra Jason is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UNC-Charlotte. She is an interdisciplinary health disparities scholar who examines individual-level factors, contextual level factors (i.e. the workplace), and life events that may influence the relationship between health and desired workforce participation for older Black workers. Her program of research seeks to identify contributing factors to health disparities by examining the links between race, discrimination, workforce behaviors, and care processes. Previously, Dr. Jason worked at the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute on Aging where her research focused on workforce development for frontline healthcare workers by analyzing factors affecting quality of care, patient satisfaction, and better patient outcomes through skill development. Currently, she aims to contribute to our understanding of the adverse effects of workplace conditions on Black caregivers’ health status and ability to work by examining social conditions within the workplace that may influence older working caregivers’ with multiple chronic conditions.

Cal J. Halvorsen is an assistant professor at the Boston College School of Social Work and an affiliate of the Center for Aging & Work at Boston College. His research interests include the antecedents, experiences, and outcomes of longer working lives, with emphasis on later-life self-employment and entrepreneurship, encore careers, and older adults as social innovators. Cal was selected as an inaugural member of the 2018-2019 Encore Public Voices Fellowship and has taught courses related to aging societies, social work practice, and research methods at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Prior to earning his Ph.D., Cal worked for six years at Encore.org, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging people in midlife and beyond in paid and unpaid work that improves the world, later serving as the organization’s director of research and evaluation. During this time, Cal was invited to present at the University of Oxford in the U.K., as well as the Körber Foundation and EBS Universität in Germany. He is a graduate of both the MSW and Ph.D. programs at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and earned his BA from the University of Iowa in his hometown of Iowa City.

Phyllis Moen is the McKnight Presidential Chair in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She studies occupational careers, gender, families, and well-being over the life course, including the frequently obsolete social, cultural, and policy ecologies in which lives play out. She has published numerous books, such as Women’s Two Roles: a Contemporary Dilemma (1992); It’s About Time: Couples and Careers (2003); and The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (Rowman & Littlefield 2005), with Patricia Roehling based on scholarship funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of the Cornell Careers Institute at Cornell University. Professor Moen serves as a board member of Civic Ventures, a non-for-profit organization that generates ideas and programs to reframe and redefine the second half of life and is part of the Conference Board’s Work-Life Leadership Council. She is currently the chair of the Aging and Life Course section of the American Sociological Association and has been elected as a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the National Council of Family Relations.

Sara E. Rix is currently, a consultant focusing on the economics of aging, particularly labor force trends, employment, and retirement policy, and the challenges older workers face in remaining employed. In early 2015, she retired after 25 years as an employment expert on the Economics Team of AARP’s Public Policy Institute. Dr. Rix has written and spoken extensively on older workers, an aging society, and aging issues for some 40 years. She has been involved in numerous national and international activities dealing with the problems of, and prospects for, an aging world, including serving for many years as a lecturer in the Economic and Financial Aspects of Aging training program of the UN’s International Institute on Ageing in Malta. She is a member of the Post-Retirement Needs and Risks Committee of the Society of Actuaries and serves on the editorial or advisory boards of The Gerontologist, Public Policy and Aging Report, Journal of Retirement, Journal of Aging Policy, and Wider Opportunities for Women’s Elder Economic Security Initiative.  While at AARP, she was a regular blogger for the Huffington Post on older workers and a co-convener of the Gerontological Society’s Older Workers and an Aging Workforce Interest Group.  She is a fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Royal Society the Arts, and the Gerontological Society of America.  Prior to coming to AARP, she was Director of Research at the Women’s Research and Education Institute.  In her spare time, she volunteers as a primate interpreter and elephant behavior watcher at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.

Philip Taylor has 30 years of experience as a researcher, policy writer, and advisor on workforce aging. He has written over 160 books, journal articles, book chapters, reports, and commentaries on issues including individual orientations to work and retirement, employer behavior towards older workers, and developments in public policy aimed at prolonging working life. He has provided advice to senior politicians and served on a number of public committees in Australia, the U.K., and elsewhere. He has won major competitive grants from ARC (Australia), SSHRCC (Canada), and the ESRC (U.K.) and substantial consultancy funding from various Australian, European Union, and Singaporean agencies, among others. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and Associate Editor of the Journal Ageing & Society. He was the 2018 Australian Association of Gerontology Glenda Powell Travelling Fellow on the topic of work and aging.

Johanna Thunell is in her third year as a postdoctoral fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Her research focuses on the health and well-being of persons with dementia and their caregivers, including racial and ethnic disparities in outcomes, and how government policies address their needs. She also studies the impact of changes in regulations like Medicare on access to health care among people with ADRD and their caregivers. She has published in health, economics, housing, and policy journals, such as Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, and Journal of Housing Economics. Thunell earned her BA in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree at San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. in public policy at the USC Price School of Public Policy, where she specialized in labor and health economics, as well as housing and inequality. Her dissertation analyzed the impact of policy on parents and caregivers and earned the Henry Reining Dissertation Award.

Ruth Kanfer is a professor of psychology and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Human Work in the 21st Century at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Her areas of expertise include work motivation, job transitions, and the aging worker. She has published extensively on these and related topics and is co-editor of four books on motivation and emotions related to work and the age-diverse workforce. She has received APA’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award and Williams R. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award. Her work has been supported by private organizations, foundations, and national agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Society for Human Resource Management. She has also served on the Academy of Management Board of Governors and as Division Chair of the Organizational Behavior Division, currently serves on the National Research Council’s Science and Practice of Learning Committee and has served on editorial boards of major journals in her field, including Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, and Work Aging, and Retirement. Dr. Kanfer is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Sciences, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes is is a professor emerita in the Boston College School of Social Work and has appointments at the Boston College Carroll School of Management and the Business School at Middlesex University in London. Beginning in 2014, Dr. Pitt-Catsouphes became the Director of the Doctoral Program in Social Work at Boston College. In 2017, she became the School’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Academic Affairs. She is also founding director of the Center on Aging & Work and current co-president of the Work and Family Researchers Network. Dr. Pitt-Catsouphes speaks frequently at conferences and meetings and was most recently one of the invited plenary speakers at the 2015 Society for Social Work Research Annual Meeting. Her articles have been published in a number of scholarly and practitioner journals. She was a founding co-editor of the international journal, Community, Work & Family and co-edited a special issue of Generations (2007). Dr. Pitt-Catsouphes has co-edited a special issue of Work, Aging, and Retirement that was published in 2016. Her publications include The Work-Family Handbook: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches to Research (Erlbaum Publishers, 2006), which she edited with colleagues. She received her BA from Tufts University, MSP from Boston College, and Ph.D. from Boston University.

Harvey L.  Sterns is a professor of psychology at the University of Akron. His major areas of interest include industrial gerontology, life-span development, training, and career development. He is  the director of the Institute for Life-Span Development and Gerontology. His current research interests include self-management of career and retirement, training of adult and older adult workers, personality factors, retirement adjustment and satisfaction, and issues of late-career academics.