Biography
Sheila H. Akabas is the Director Emeritus of the Workplace Center, Senior Research Scientist and Professor Emeritus at the Columbia School of Social Work where she chaired 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. She 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. She 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 was 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 was named a Switzer Scholar. She is the author or co-author and editor of several books including Work and the Workplace: A Resource for Innovative Policy and Practice published by Columbia University Press in 2005. Dr. Akabas contributes widely to a variety of scholarly journals and provides 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.
For a list of publications and reports, click here.