Dr. Nela Richardson is chief economist and ESG officer for ADP Inc. She also leads the independent team at ADP Research, which provides reliable and timely data-driven discovery for use by the public, business leaders, and policymakers. 

In 2021, Richardson led a revamp of the ADP National Employment Report in collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab and launched Pay Insights, a report that tracks wage growth based on the payroll data of almost 10 million individual workers. 

 In addition to ongoing labor market analysis, Richardson provides insights on the dynamic shifts of the economy. She is a highly sought speaker and has delivered remarks at global thought leadership events such as the World Economic Forum Annual Conference in Davos, Switzerland, and the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. 

 Richardson is a contributor to Bloomberg and Marketplace from American Public Media. She frequently appears on CNBC, Fox Business, CNN, Yahoo! Finance, and in The Wall Street Journal, FORTUNE magazine, and The New York Times. Her weekly column, Main Street Macro, examines economic conditions and their effect on small and large businesses, workers, and households. 

 Prior to joining ADP, Richardson was a principal and investment strategist at Edward Jones, where she analyzed and interpreted economic trends and financial market conditions and recommended investment strategies. She previously served as chief economist at Redfin Corp., a national real estate brokerage and technology company, where she led a team of data scientists, economists, and writers who tracked trends in the housing market. At Bloomberg, L.P., she was a senior economist covering housing and financial markets. 

 Richardson has held research positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Freddie Mac. She held an adjunct finance professorship at the Carey School of Business at John Hopkins University.  

 She was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, with concentrations in financial economics, international finance, and economic development. She earned her master’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington with a triple major in mathematics, economics, and philosophy. 

 Richardson is a member of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab Advisory Group, the National Academies Committee on National Statistics, the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council, and the US Monetary Policy Forum. 

Jeff Nezaj joined the ADP Research Institute in 2017 as director of data analytics. He mines ADP’s vast repository of payroll data, which represents roughly 16 percent of the U.S. employment base, to deliver valuable insights into the labor market.

Jeff has a passion for data. With nearly 20 years of experience in data and business analytics, he has helped organizations improve their business processes and increase revenue and profitability. 

Prior to joining ADP, he held leadership positions at direct-to-consumer marketing and financial services companies. At Univision Communications, Jeff led the enterprise business unit’s analytics group, where his valuable data insights helped guide customer strategy. 

At Guthy-Renker, a direct marketing company, Jeff played a key role in customer analytics, providing insights that resulted in a better understanding of customer behavior across all direct-to-consumer products.

Earlier in his career, he held significant positions at Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where he focused on risk management and decision sciences.

A native New Yorker, Jeff received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering and a master’s degree in statistics from Columbia University.

Liv Ye Wang is a lead data scientist at ADP Research Institute, having joined the team in 2017. She manages company-wide data mining and analytics initiatives, identifying relevant data from client systems and platforms. 

Liv is the driving force behind ADP’s monthly Pay Insights report, which mines payroll data to provide a view into the wages and salaries of almost 10 million U.S. workers. She also has conducted research on remote work and the gig economy.

With master’s degrees in economics from Fordham University and CUNY Graduate Center and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Liv is now pursuing a doctorate in economics at CUNY Graduate Center.

Before joining ADP, Liv was an economics intern at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she developed business forecasts for the aviation division. She also taught finance and macroeconomics classes at Hunter College, City College of New York, and Baruch College.

Ben Hanowell joined the ADP Research Institute in 2021. As an anthropologist and people analyst, he explores people's decisions about where, when, and how they work. He also studies corporate decision-making in workforce management, relying on data from human capital management systems, surveys, public datasets, and in-depth interviews.

Ben is as much at home writing code for complex statistical models as he is designing a survey, speaking one-on-one with workforce management executives, and talking to front-line workers.

Before joining ADP, Ben was a senior data scientist at Amazon.com Inc., studying one of the world's largest private workforces. He developed algorithms to measure and predict which package-delivery contractors were most willing to work.

Before joining Amazon, Ben worked at A Place for Mom, a senior-living referral service, where he analyzed pricing, demand, consumer preferences, and demographic trends in senior housing and care. 

At real estate brokerage Redfin Corp., Ben studied predictors of productivity, retention, and customer satisfaction among real estate agents.

Ben’s interdisciplinary graduate research at the University of Washington was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, and a Fulbright Scholarship. He lives in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Tim Decker joined the ADP Research Institute in 2021 as a principal data scientist. He is fascinated with quantifying the world and has a knack for seeing problems through a unique lens. 

Tim enjoys communicating nuanced concepts with simple analogies and reducing complex systems into bite-sized pieces. He has a track record of solving complex problems. 

His career started at a scientific think tank, where he worked on the deterministic chaotic dynamics of extreme weather events, including hurricanes, tsunamis, and droughts. He conducted catastrophic risk analytics, aided forecasting, and constructed algorithms to better understand natural hazards.

Tim later worked at several large companies, including Starbucks Corp. and Facebook, where he collaborated with business partners and deployed data science solutions at scale. He gained experience in operations research, information retrieval, time series analysis, and natural-language processing. He has developed and deployed models utilizing numerical simulations, nonlinear optimization, and neural networks.

Before joining ADP, Tim led the metadata and search team at e-commerce company Zulily, where he re-architected its A/B experimentation platform.

Tim enjoys mentoring junior data scientists and establishing data science best practices. He has a bachelor’s degree in applied computational and mathematical sciences with a focus in economics from the University of Washington.

Sam Adieze joined the ADP Research Institute as a research assistant in 2021, bringing a rich background in machine learning, visualization, and large-scale data processing.  

Soon after joining the team, Sam built a tool to track pay by job title and industry, data that can be broken down by gender, employment type, location, and other categories.  

He is currently working on a project to identify pay revisions and their frequency to create a pay reliability score for employers.   

Before joining ADP, Sam worked extensively in the financial services industry as a banking specialist and IT analyst. As an analyst, he specialized in identifying potentially fraudulent activity in internal money transfers.  

Sam graduated from Rowan University in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in data science. 

Marie Antonello is the senior director for strategic initiatives and partnerships at the ADP Research Institute. In her role, she leads the development of the strategies for the brand and oversees all the marketing operations for the research team. Marie also manages the business development for external partnership relationships collaborating closely with ADP’s cross functional team. Marie joined the ADP Research Institute as a senior director of program management in 2020 to manage the production of its labor market research and implement strategic marketing operations processes to help grow brand awareness. She also co-authored the team's annual People at Work report.

Before joining the ADP Research Institute, Marie worked at American International Group Inc. for more than 16 years, most recently as an assistant vice president of strategic marketing and business development for the insurer’s private client division. 

At AIG, Marie led the producer management department, supporting the company’s U.S. and Canada marketing teams. Her strategic and operational skills contributed to the successful launch of several markets for business growth. Marie’s property and casualty insurance expertise helped the company execute a new quoting system to improve functionality for clients and brokers. 

She was instrumental in developing and expanding AIG’s continuing education program. In 2019, the AIG Women & Allies Employee Resource Group recognized Marie for her leadership and inspiration.

Prior to her tenure at AIG, Marie held paralegal positions at the New York City law firms Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, and Mendes & Mount.  

Marie has a Bachelor of Science degree in legal studies from St. John’s University. She earned a project management certificate from the Technical Institute of America.

Issi Romem is an economist and a fellow at the ADP Research Institute, which he joined in 2021. He is the founder of MetroSight, an economics research firm with deep expertise in housing and urban and labor economics. He also is an affiliate of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

Before establishing MetroSight, Issi was chief economist at Trulia, a housing portal, and senior director of housing and urban economics at real estate marketplace Zillow. He served as chief economist at construction platform BuildZoom Inc., advised the Rentonomics team at rental marketplace Apartment List, and worked as an economist at OnPoint Analytics Inc. and the Bay Area Council, a business association in San Francisco.

Issi’s research and writing on metropolitan growth patterns, construction trends, and housing have been featured in major publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and more. He regularly speaks at industry and research forums.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University, and holds a doctorate in economics from U.C. Berkeley, where he was advised by Nobel laureate David Card, Robert Helsley, and Enrico Moretti. He was an adjunct professor of econometrics in Berkeley’s economics department.

Fraila Francis joined the ADP Research Institute in 2023 as a Technical Project Manager. She brings in rich expertise in delivering complex projects in modern technology stack. She is a certified professional scrum master and a strong advocate of striking the right balance between processes & agility.

Before joining ADP, Fraila lead the multiple multi-national project deliveries in the Telecom domain for Infosys, HP & IBM with the client bases across the United States & Australia.

Fraila completed her master's degree in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology where she was part of the research project with NASA on the prediction of space weather events. She was the salutatorian in University of Calicut during her undergrads in Computer Science. Fraila is a professional South Indian classical dancer & performs for various cultural events in the Tri-State.

Mary Hayes earned a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her Master's degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was focused on Qualitative, Quantitative and Psychometrics Methodology with additional work in Survey Research Methodology. Both of Dr. Hayes' degrees focus on the psychology of people and how these people flourish through positive psychology. Since 2005, Dr. Hayes has worked closely with Marcus Buckingham in the development of the StandOut Assessment and other StandOut tools and resources, assuming the role of TMBC Senior Researcher in 2015 and Research Director, People and Performance in 2018. Prior to her time with TMBC, Dr. Hayes served as the Innovation and Impact Director for HUMANeX Ventures, Data Management Director at Creighton University School of Pharmacy and has also provided consultation services in the fields of human resource management and human performance since 2003.

Dr. Hayes' research focus has been on engagement, turnover, knowledge worker performance and teams in the work place. Dr. Hayes partnered with Marcus Buckingham for over a decade to design and implement valid and reliable tools to help workers get more out of their work experiences. This can be described as the practitioner/ scientist model where we bring the best of both worlds to make a difference for the knowledge worker – together focusing on sound research with clients to help them understand the relationships between engagement and performance, engagement and turnover, as well as other relevant issues in the world of work.

Jared joined the ADP Research Institute in 2023 as a Research Analyst. He brings with him a lifelong passion for the social sciences and a desire to better understand and contribute in a meaningful way to the world of work.

Prior to joining ADP, Jared spent nearly 15 years of his career collaborating world-wide with school systems, hospitals, hotels, financial institutions, and other organizations, creating assessments to support their personnel selection, team development, and workplace culture-building efforts. He has lead an eight-member research team, using qualitative and quantitative analysis to create instruments for personnel selection, staff engagement and retention, culture building, and leadership development, and implemented a mixed-methods research approach and statistical data analyses to create and continuously improve personnel selection tools, culture and climate surveys, and other assessments. 

Jared graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology & anthropology, with an emphasis in qualitative and quantitative research methods. He has a master’s degree in forensic science and focused his thesis on the measurement of personal integrity and ethics in law enforcement officers. Jared devoted many years to the field of social work, where he supported children and families in foster care, while also teaching math to elementary and middle school students in a highly gifted program. He loves participating in marathons and adventure races, watching his wife compete in the Women's Flat Track Derby Association, and spending time at the beach with his family.

Kristi joined the ADP Research Institute in April 2020 to drive the production of groundbreaking People + Performance research. In July 2024, she transitioned her program management responsibilities to support ADP's ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) initiatives. She orchestrates the ESG Steering Committee, Operating Committee, and various working groups and collaborates across geographies, business units and functions in support of translating ADP's ESG efforts into a cohesive, multistakeholder engagement strategy.

Prior to joining the Research Institute, Kristi spent 10 years as the Director of Client Success for The Marcus Buckingham Company (TMBC), an ADP Company. At TMBC, Kristi led cross-functional teams of geographically dispersed resources to deliver technology, training and coaching solutions on time, to specification and within budget. She strategically managed the relationships of large, complex corporate clients.

Prior to joining TMBC, Kristi spent 18 years with the Hewlett-Packard Company, providing global project management for multi-million dollar client projects. During her time at Hewlett-Packard, Kristi implemented numerous improvements to the organization’s planning and processes. Responsible for the global plan of record management and customer issue management, she aligned sales and operations teams across regions to a prioritized list of initiatives and resolved complex global customer issues involving product delivery in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Her client accounts included McKinsey & Company, Chevron, Morrison & Foerster, Starbucks, and Franklin Templeton.

Kristi graduated with distinction from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln with a degree in Business Administration. She received an emphasis in International Business from studying abroad at Oxford University in Oxford, England and Senshu University in Tokyo, Japan. Kristi was a member of the Project Management Institute and certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) from 2004–2010.