Staff

Workplace Center staff members are a multi-disciplinary team of experts dedicated to the importance of work in people's lives. The staffing of the Center has historically included people from multiple disciplines. Through this interdisciplinary team approach, the staff have the variety in perspective necessary to help organizations create sustainable organizational change directed at improving the well being of individuals and organizations in the world of work.

Sheila H. Akabas, Ph.D.

Sheila H. Akabas is the Director of the Workplace Center and a Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work where she chairs Social Enterprise Administration as a method of practice and World of Work as a field of practice.  She is an internationally renowned expert and scholar of human resource management, disability policy and practice and delivery of social services to workers. Dr. Akabas also directs the Center for Social Policy and Practice in the Workplace. She has served as Principal Investigator on numerous government and foundation funded research projects and as consultant to corporations, trade unions, and nonprofit institutions in the United States and abroad, often in the role of evaluator and program developer. Dr. Akabas acted as consultant to the United Nations Development Program on disability policy in Bulgaria and on training policy for participation in competitive labor markets in Kazhakstan. She has served on the Executive Committee of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, and for ten years was Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee to the Dole Foundation for Employment of People with Disabilities. Dr. Akabas has been honored for her work by the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University as its Groat Awardee, by the National Association of Social Work, the National Rehabilitation Association, Boston University and has been named a Switzer Scholar. She is the author and editor of several books; the latest, co-authored, is entitled Work and the Workplace: A Resource for Innovative Policy and Practice and was published by Columbia University Press in 2005. Dr. Akabas contributes widely to a variety of scholarly journals and has been invited to provide expert testimony to both legislative hearings and in federal court. She is a graduate of Cornell University and holds an M.B.A. and a doctorate, with honors, in economics from New York University.

Lauren B. Gates, Ph.D.

Lauren B. Gates is the Research Director of the Center for Social Policy and Practice and a Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW). Dr. Gates has conducted research and provided training, developed policy and programs and offered consultation around workplace issues for people at risk of not being able to secure or sustain employment such as individuals with physical or psychiatric disability, youth transitioning from foster care, older people or victims of domestic violence. Her current research includes a study of workplace supports that help single parents of children with asthma meet job demands while caring for their children and a test of the effectiveness of strategies that promote the integration of peer staff into social services agencies. Dr. Gates is also providing training on employment-related best practice for the New York State provider systems. As an adjunct professor she has taught courses at CUSSW in research methods and vocational issues. Her publications include Disability Management: A Complete System to Reduce Costs, Increase Productivity, Meet Employee Needs, and Ensure Legal Compliance co-authored with S. H. Akabas and D. Galvin and Planning for Disability Management: An Approach to Controlling Costs While Caring for Employees co-authored with S. H. Akabas as well as numerous articles on vocational evidence based practice, disability, labor force diversity and neighborhood planning.

Virginia Oran-Sabia, M.S.

Virginia Oran-Sabia is the Training Director of the Workplace Center and an experienced clinician, trainer, and consultant. She began her professional career working with adolescents challenged by issues of recovery and homelessness. As a clinician in a union setting, she provided legal services and supports related to housing, mental illness, substance abuse, family systems, and related job maintenance issues to union workers. She has experience providing psycho-educational interventions to workgroups for consumers challenged by the impact of mental illness in the workplace. Current work includes: managing vocational change initiatives in social service programs, hospital centers, and community-based agencies; overseeing a project with a coalition of Bronx facilities to integrate disaster management activities for defining social work department roles in disaster, including training, policy and procedure and program development activities; and developing Center funding opportunities. Ms. Oran-Sabia has a range of experiences in group work, working in interdisciplinary environments and program development related to change efforts. Ms. Oran-Sabia received her M.S. from Columbia University School of Social Work and a B.S. in Biology from Fordham University.

Kathleen O'Hara, M.S.W.

Kathleen O’Hara is a first year doctoral student at the Columbia University School of Social Work. She has worked and volunteered with a variety of community development projects in Central America and Africa, with a focus on the inclusion of socially marginalized populations in the development process. She has additional work experience with social service programs for immigrant families in the Unites States. Prior to attending Columbia, she worked at the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, with a research focus on civic engagement, volunteerism, and community-based participatory research in the developing world. Ms. O’Hara received a B.A. in English Literature from Swarthmore College and earned her M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Kristen Kuzia, B.S.

Kristen Kuzia is the research and administrative assistant at the Center. She graduated from Endicott College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Criminal Justice. She provides support and assistance to staff in all of the projects at the Workplace Center, with particular expertise around research and data management.