Center on Global Poverty and Development Speaker Series - The Role of Cash Transfers in Philanthropy and Policy

About the speakers

Paul Niehaus is Associate Professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, where he works with governments in emerging markets to improve the implementation of social programs. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Junior Affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), an Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). He is also co-founder and president of GiveDirectly, currently one of the top-rated nonprofits by GiveWell and ranked among the 25 most audacious companies (Inc) and 10 most innovative companies in finance (Fast Company), and co-founder of Segovia Technology Co. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University. In 2013 Foreign Policy named him one of its 100 leading "Global Thinkers."

Paul Brest is Former Dean and Professor Emeritus (active) at Stanford Law School, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and co-director of the Stanford Law and Policy Lab. He was president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation from 2000-2012.

He is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Guide to Smart Philanthropy (2nd ed . 2018), Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (2010), and articles on constitutional law, philanthropy, and impact investing. His current courses include Problem Solving for Public Policy and Social Change, Advanced Topics in Philanthropy and Impact Investing, Accounting for the Unintended Consequences of Impact Investing, and Beyond Neoliberalism. He created the online interactive course, Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy on Stanford’s Lagunita platform and is the instructor in an online course, Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy, offered by Philanthropy University.

Professor Brest is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary degrees from Northwestern University School of Law and Swarthmore College. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1969, he clerked for Judge Bailey Aldrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice John M. Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court, and did civil rights litigation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Mississippi.