Arena C. Lam is a Senior Research Associate. Lam works on evaluations related to criminal and juvenile justice, teen pregnancy prevention, human trafficking, school-based health services, college affordability, and teacher preparation. She has extensive experience analyzing complex criminal justice and education data of various research designs (randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental, longitudinal, and cross-sectional). Lam utilizes analytic techniques such as survival analysis, regression, hierarchical linear modeling, structural equation modeling, and person-centered approaches as part of her work in evaluation studies and publications in peer-reviewed journals. Lam received a master’s degree and PhD in education from the University of California, Irvine.

Jennifer Loeffler-Cobia is the Justice and Public Health Policy and Practice Director. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Bovard College at the University of Southern California where she teaches system thinking to solve complex public health and criminal justice issues. She has over 20 years of experience conducting evaluation studies, particularly in areas relevant to juvenile and adult criminal justice evidence-based practices, substance misuse prevention and intervention, violence prevention, and public health. She is an experienced technical assistance (TA) provider and has directed numerous TA centers, such as the National Reentry Resource Center and Children Exposed to Violence TTA Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. She has served as a subject matter expert and researcher on studies funded by various organizations, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. She has also conducted Capitol Hill briefings for the U.S. Congress regarding the application of criminal justice and public health policy reforms in real-world settings. She received both her Bachelor of Science in Public Health and Master of Science in Health Research and Evaluation from Utah State University and Doctorate in Public Health from University of South Florida.

Derek Lowry is a Senior Justice Technical Assistance Specialist. He has a diverse background working on a range of justice-focused issues with federal and state agency partners and he is an experienced project manager, technical assistance consultant, and policy analyst in extensive systems-based and stakeholder focused work. He has a rich history contributing guidance to federally funded projects. Lowry has been a project manager and implementation specialist on many notable reentry-focused and public safety projects. He led a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funded Buffalo, NY project that included a technical systems approach and concluded with a sequential-mapping report delivered to the county. He has worked with many grantees receiving funding through the Second Chance Act (SCA), and he has worked in partnership with sites awarded Second Chance Pell (SCP) waivers to expand post-secondary education into carceral settings.

Lowry has written reports for the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), created products that document racial equity, and been the co-director of a direct-service reentry nonprofit organization. Derek has an MPP in poverty alleviation from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Brandeis University and holds a BA in English from the University of South Carolina. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer and educator.

Pamela MacDougall is a Senior Program Coordinator. She works closely with project teams to ensure that deliverables are met. She monitors budgets, organizes and monitors field research, schedules interviews and project activities, develops online questionnaires, analyzes and synthesizes survey data, contributes to evaluation reports and proposal writing, and conducts background research as well as quantitative and qualitative data analyses. MacDougall also works with projects to develop and maintain databases to organize, manage, and present information and data. She received a bachelor of science in liberal arts with a concentration in legal ethics from Salem State University.

Jonathan Nakamoto is a Senior Research Associate. He is the director of an evaluation of Project With, which is a teen pregnancy prevention program that is implemented with justice-involved youth residing in Los Angeles County Probation Department facilities and group homes in Southern California. The evaluation uses a quasi-experimental design to rigorously examine the program’s impact on the participating youth. Previously, Nakamoto led a cost analysis of another teen pregnancy prevention program, Healthy U, which our team helped implement in juvenile justice facilities in Oregon. Additionally, Nakamoto co-authored a peer-reviewed publication on the impacts of Healthy U based on a rigorous cluster-randomized controlled study. Nakamoto has used experimental and quasi-experimental research designs to evaluate the impact of various education interventions. His published work in peer-reviewed journals has employed several analytic techniques, including hierarchical linear modeling, structural equation modeling, multiple imputation, and meta-analysis. Nakamoto received a master’s degree and PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Southern California.

Lori Toscano is the Director of Technical Assistance. She works to expand and deepen the JPRC’s technical assistance and training work and impact. Her areas of expertise include technical assistance, training development, program development and implementation, strategic development, and systems change. She has over 20 years of experience in community-based violence prevention and intervention. Previously, Toscano was the Executive Director of Program Innovation at Cure Violence Global. She has provided technical assistance to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) as part of their Supporting Male Survivors of Violence and Advancing Hospital-Based Victims Services demonstration projects. She has worked both nationally and internationally with cities and communities disproportionally impacted by violence. Toscano received her bachelor’s degree from Towson State University and her master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Baltimore.