Officers and Committees

Kim Quinn
2026 MPA President

MPA Council

Shira Gabriel – MPA Past President (2025 Meeting)
University of Buffalo

Kim Rios – MPA President Elect (2027 Meeting)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Melissa Buelow – Council Member (2025-2027)
The Ohio State University at Newark

Jiuqing Cheng – Council Member (2024-2026)
University of Northern Iowa

Eric Wesselmann – Council Member (2026-2028)
Illinois State University

For a full list of people elected to serve as MPA Council Members since 2004, click HERE!


Appointed Officers

Michael J. Bernstein – Executive Officer (2018-Present)
Penn State University Abington

Paige Lloyd – Associate Executive Officer (2025-Present)
University of Denver

Russ Webster – Associate Executive Officer (2025-Present)
Penn State University Abington

Daren Kaiser – Treasurer (2015-2026)
Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne

James Wirth – Treasurer  (2025-Present)
The Ohio State University at Newark

Lorraine Grogan – Convention Manager (2016-Present) ConferenceDirect®

Allen R. McConnell – Investment Committee Chair
Miami University

Bernard L. Dugoni – Historian
University of Chicago

Program Committee

Members of the MPA Program Committee serve a three year term and have the following duties (approximate timeline is included as well):

(1) Help to develop a list of invited speakers, invited symposia, and moderators within your area of programming (TIMELINE: Summer)
(2) Review submissions in their program area along with their partner on the committee. Typical reviewing loads are between 100 and 200 submissions. Resolve discrepancies between you and team mates. (TIMELINE: a very busy 2 weeks in the middle of November).
(3) Attend the December Programming meeting in Chicago (paid for by MPA usually on the first Saturday of the month) and spend the day (8am-3pm) building the sessions for the program. This is a MUST attend meeting.

The committee is as follows.

Jonathan J Hammersley – Program Moderator (2026 Meeting)
Western Illinois University

Tessa Benson-Greenwald, University of Pittsburgh (2024-2026)
KatieAnn Skogsberg, Centre College (2023-2026)
Jordan Wagge, Avila University (2025-2026)
Michael Baumann, The University of Texas at San Antonio (2025-2027)
Dan Lannin, Illinois State University (2025-2027)
Kristy Dean, Grand Valley State University, (2025-2027)
Nida Bikmen, Denison University (2025-2027)
Hannah Hamilton, University of Chicago (2026-2028)
Karin Gill, Centre College (2026-2028)
Anjolii Diaz, Ball State University (2026-2028)
Gerardo Ramirez, Ball State University (2026-2028)
Maayan Dvir, Reichman University (2026-2028)

MPA Fellows and Local Representatives Info

Looking for information about becoming an MPA Fellow and who MPA Fellows are or who your local representative is? We moved that info to it’s own pages! Click the About tab to find those pages in the drop down or click HERE or MPA Fellow page and HERE for MPA Local Representative page.