ENSA Corporate Board and Officer Election

Over the last two years, ENSA has lost three of our esteemed board members to retirement. We thank Dr. David Chu (IDA), Dr. Linda Cavalluzzo (CNA), and Dr. Susan Marquis (RAND) for their service to ENSA.

We will hold a Corporate Board and Officer Election this October to elect new members. Our slate includes representatives from each of the three Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that helped found ENSA (IDA, CNA, and RAND) as well as academic and government partners. We’ve provided short bios for each below. We will also welcome write-in nominations.

The election will be by electronic ballot. All members will receive instructions on how to vote and will have 2 weeks to do so. The election is scheduled to start on October 9th and run the COB on October 20th. More details to come. We look forward to the coming year and our ASSA session.

ENSA 2023 Corporate Board and Officer Slate

Eli Berman is professor of economics at UC San Diego, past chair of the Economics Department and a faculty member in the School of Global Policy and Strategy. He the Research Director for International Security Studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He is research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he has led the Economics of National Security group. He is a founding board member and current President of the Economics of National Security Association, and a founding member and past Executive Director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict project. Professor Berman had a central role in the five-year grant entitled, “Terrorism, Governance, and Development” funded under the first round of the Minerva Research Initiative, led the Minerva “Deterrence with Proxies” project, and currently leads the Minerva “Integrated Deterrence” project. He has led other large multi-investigator grants funded by various agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the US Agency for International Development. He was a founding board member of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture (ASREC). Berman received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications on terrorism and insurgency, including the books Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (MIT Press: 2009), Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict, (with Joseph H. Felter and Jacob N. Shapiro; Princeton Press, 2018), and Proxy Wars (co-edited, with David Lake; Cornell Press, 2019).

Michael Meese (US Army, Retired) is the President of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association (AAFMAA).  He is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, served as a Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Transition Team, and led the 2016-17 Presidential Transition Team for the Department of Veterans Affairs.  In 2013, after 32 years in the Army, he retired as a Professor and the Head of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.  He has written extensively on Economics of National Security including the books American National Security and the Armed Forces Guide to Personal Financial Planning.  He is a graduate of the National War College, U.S. Military Academy, and holds a Ph.D., MPA and an M.A. from Princeton University. Michael is a founding board member of ENSA.

Sarah John is an Assistant Division Director in the Cost Analysis and Research Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) where she has worked for 10 years.  Her fields of expertise include labor economics, public economics, health economics, and cost estimation. Sarah’s work at IDA is largely focused on military healthcare and southwest border security. She is a subject matter expert on the military health system and has led numerous large independent research studies in this area including Congressionally directed studies.  She has also published work in the academic literature in journals including: Journal of Trauma, Military Medicine, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.  Sarah has a PhD in economics from the University of Kentucky and a B.A. in economics from Transylvania University. Sarah has been a member of ENSA since its inception and currently serves as secretary and board member.

Jennie W. Wenger is a Senior Economist and the Research Department Director for Economics, Sociology, and Statistics at the RAND Corporation, where she studies education and training, military compensation, and recruiting. Some of her recent projects have examined the effectiveness of a program for at-risk high school students, the implications of integrating women into combat arms occupations, the Post-9/11 GI Bill, tuition assistance for servicemembers, changes in diversity in the military over time, and the effects of time at sea on Coast Guard personnel. She also works on projects that focus on veterans’ transitions into the civilian labor force, as well as the effective uses of social media. Before joining RAND, she was a Senior Research Scientist and Project Manager at CNA where she authored a series of reports examining the relationship between body fat and performance in the enlisted military. She was the co-PI on a study documenting many aspects of military dependents’ educational experiences. Wenger received her Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Bill Komiss is a recognized expert in the economics of energy and infrastructure. He is currently the Research Program Director for Energry, Infrastructure, & Environment Resources and Force Readiness at CNA. During his 14 years at CNA, his work has included research papers on a variety of topics, including operational energy, renewable energy, electric vehicles and non-tactical vehicles, military construction, facility sustainment, and encroachment. Dr. Komiss’s research has been cited in multiple journals, such as International Security, Communications in Transportation Research, Journal of Transportation Security, and the International Handbook of Energy Security. Dr.Komiss graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and holds a doctoral degree in economics from Stanford University (with fields in labor economics and economic history). Bill is a current ENSA member.

Colonel Carl J. Wojtaszek serves as the Director of the Economics Program and as an Academy Professor within the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. Prior to his appointment to the Social Science Department, Carl served as both an infantry officer in the 101st Airborne Division and as a military intelligence officer specializing in interrogation operations. In 2009, Carl joined Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) as a research analyst, and later Deputy Director, helping to create innovative solutions and inform Army and DoD policy for strategic manpower challenges. In 2017, he became only the fifth OEMA Director in its 40 year history. (https://www.oema.army.mil/) Carl graduated West Point in 1999 with a B.S. in economics. He earned a Master’s of Business Administration from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame in 2015. His primary research interests include labor and public economics within the context of manning an All-Volunteer Force. Carl teaches both introductory economics classes as well as courses on microeconomic theory and econometrics.

Mike Kofoed is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and the Boyd Center for Business and Economics Research in the Haslam College of Business.  He is an IZA Research Fellow, a visiting scholar at the Consumer Finance Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and an invited researcher at J-PAL North America. Previously, he served as an Associate Professor of Economics and Associate Economics Program Director in the Department of Social Science at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His research interests include the economics of national security and its intersection with health economics and the economics of education.  Topics include the Post 9-11 GI Bill, the role of for-profit colleges in veteran education, the effects of the Affordable Care Act and Free Community College on retention and recruitment, and conducted a randomized controlled trial at West Point to estimate learning loss during COVID-19 pandemic.  His papers have been published in Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Public Choice, Contemporary Economic Policy, and more.  Mike hopes to serve ENSA by encouraging research in my dimensions in defense policy including labor, health, and manpower topics.  He hopes to help serve as a bridge between policymakers, academic researchers, and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs).