Barbara Ray, Principal

Barbara Ray has nearly 20 years of academic publishing and public policy writing experience. She is the author (with Richard Settersten) of the forthcoming Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood and Why It's Good for Everyone (Random House, 2011). She blogs about the topic here.

She was a managing editor at the University of Chicago Press, journals division, and she has held several senior writing/editing positions at leading research institutes, most recently the Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago. She specializes in social welfare policy and research, with special attention to issues of poverty and its many ramifications, but she has done work for many other nonprofit organizations whose goal is to influence policy. Ray focuses in getting research into the hands of policymakers, stakeholders, and general readers in a form they will read, understand, and act on.

She has recently added social media outreach to her resume, as the exectuive editor of Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Spotlight is a website and blog that chronicles the work of researchers and preojcts supported by the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative. The site includes a daily blog, podcasts, video, and reporting on the topic.

Specific project experience:

• reports, trend analysis;
• policy and issue briefs;
• op-eds;
• book development, from ghost writing to editing;
• writing and production of newsletters (research based and other);
• manuscript editing;
• content-rich websites, social media;
• organized congressional briefings;
• dissemination plans for research;
• grant writing and project management;
• annual reports and other public relations material