Our team
Ehsan Zaffar
Chief Difference Engineer
Professor of Practice
Ehsan Zaffar is an educator, civil rights lawyer and founder of The Difference Engine, an ASU Center on the Future of Equality. As ASU’s “Chief Difference Engineer” Ehsan works with some of the brightest students and thoughtful faculty and staff in the country to craft real-world solutions to some of our nation’s most daunting problems.
Prior to his work at Arizona State University, he served as a Senior Advisor on Civil Rights to the Secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama Administration. He is the founder of the Los Angeles Mobile Legal Aid Clinic (LAMLAC) which helped pioneer the delivery of mobile legal care to vulnerable populations in California and across the nation. He serves on the board of ACLU California, as well as Team Rubicon, the country's pre-eminent disaster relief organization and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Learn more about Ehsan's work and listen to UnfairNation, his podcast on inequality.
Our team
Deborah Clark
Senior Fellow
If you’re familiar with the Marketplace franchise (Marketplace, Marketplace Morning Report, Marketplace Tech on public radio and a bunch of podcasts like Make Me Smart and the Uncertain Hour), you’ll recognize the name. For the last several years, Deborah was the General Manager, overseeing Marketplace’s transformation from radio to multi-platform in service of raising the economic intelligence of the country.
Her passion for helping people learn to decode the economy and understand its powerful role in all aspects of their lives is part of a lifelong interest in issues of economic inequality. During her tenure at Marketplace, she helped launch the Wealth and Poverty desk, a signature area of coverage examining economic inequality in the US. It’s some of the work she’s proudest of, including the immersive storytelling project York and Fig, that looked at the process of gentrification as it was happening in one of LA’s changing neighborhoods, Highland Park.
Since leaving Marketplace last year, Deborah has been digging into the nexus of democracy, economic inequality, and storytelling. She will continue this work as a senior fellow at ASU’s Difference Engine, where she will develop new tools and products to level the playing field and advance the center’s mission of finding innovative solutions to overlapping systems of inequality.
Deborah has spent her career in public service media. Before moving to the business side of journalism, her career was spent making great content, including as an Executive Producer at NPR and as Senior Producer for a CA statewide collaboration of the four PBS television stations. She has her masters in journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
Our team
Kenja Hassan
Fellow
Kenja Hassan serves as a liaison between ASU and diverse communities throughout Arizona. During her time at ASU, she has brought college preparation programs to American Indian students on reservations, launched a series of reports on the status of Arizona’s ethnic and racial minority populations, and orchestrated National dialogs on pressing issues in Washington, DC and other cities. She is currently a member of ASU’s Advisory Council on African American Affairs working toward institutional transformation through the LIFT Initiative. Kenja holds a B.A. in Religion from Princeton University and a M.A. in Religious Studies from ASU, both emphasizing American Indian traditions. She is pursuing a Ph.D. at ASU’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation focusing on health disparities.
Our team
Raj Gollamudi
Board of Advisors
Raj Gollamudi is a Founder and Managing Partner at OnePrime Capital, a technology investment firm based in Palo Alto, California. Raj’s venture capital career spans more than two decades including ten years with BlueStream Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm he co-founded in 2000. Raj was also an investment director at Intel Capital, the global venture capital arm of Intel Corporation. Previously, Raj was an investment partner with Omidyar Network, a global impact investing firm founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Since 2012 Raj has been an active board member at PopTech, an organization committed to fostering a global community of entrepreneurs and innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems. Raj has a BS in Electrical Engineering, a MS in Computer Science, and an MBA from The Wharton School. Raj was raised in India and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Our team
Dr. Esma Gel
Scholar for the Future of Equality
Dr. Esma Gel is the Engine’s first Scholar for the Future of Equality. In that role she helps guide our work on the Women’s Power and Influence Index and also advances research on a number of other Engine-related initiatives.
Dr. Gel received her master's and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Since joining the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Gel has been teaching graduate and undergraduate-level courses in the area of operations research and production systems. Her research focuses on the use of applied probability techniques for modeling, design and control of production systems and supply chains, with particular emphasis on workforce engineering. Her work has been published in leading journals and funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as industrial partners such as Intel, IBM and Infineon. Gel is a member of INFORMS, IIE and ASEE.
Our team
Krystal Bird
Fellow
Krystal Bird serves as the Assistant Director of Strategic Partnerships in Arizona State University’s Auxiliary Business Services division.Krystal helps to oversee a wide portfolio of operations including Campus Stores, Print Services, Pouring Rights, Campus Vending, and other strategic initiatives. Prior to joining the Auxiliary Business Services team, Krystal worked within the Healthcare industry at Kaiser Permanente Colorado in their Strategy Management division. She was responsible for the portfolio scorecard and development of internal strategies and execution plans within healthcare initiatives. Krystal has had experience in various industries including higher education, healthcare, engine test and development, mining, law enforcement, laboratory, and property management. Bird is passionate about effective servant leadership, justice, equity, and diversity.
Our team
Dulce Vasquez
Fellow
Dulce Vasquez is Director of Strategic Partnerships in the Office of the President at Arizona State University. She is responsible for developing strategic university-wide partnerships, furthering university initiatives, managing special projects, and expanding ASU’s presence in Los Angeles. Through her work, she interacts with businesses, community organizations, school districts, think-tanks, and government agencies, and connects them with every level of the university.
Having spent seven years undocumented, the economic, racial, and gender equity work that The Difference Engine will take on is deeply personal for her. She looks forward to being a part of the solutions.
You can follow Dulce’s work here.
Our team
Maryam Jamshidi
Advisory Board
Maryam Jamshidi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law where she teaches courses on national security, public international law, and torts. Her scholarship focuses on the ways in which private actors are affected by and help shape national security and the law of foreign relations, including in ways that reinforce or exacerbate inequalities with U.S. society.
Our team
Gordon Quan
Advisory Board
Former Houston Councilman and Mayor, Gordon Quan was one of the first Asian-Americans to serve as an elected official in the city. Both prior to and after his career in public service, Gordon has championed the rights of immigrants in the United States and now runs the largest immigration law firm in the nation.
Shane Portfolio
Shane Portfolio
Advisory Board
Shane Portfolio is Senior Vice President, Reliability Engineering, for Comcast Cable, where he leads the OneNetwork reliability strategy across the enterprise, as well as Headend Operations, Plant Maintenance, and the network’s eXcellence Operations Centers (XOCs).
During more than 24 years at Comcast, Shane has worked across the Regions, Divisions and Cable Headquarters in various engineering leadership roles. When serving as SVP, Technical Operations and Engineering for the West Division, he oversaw the fiber network and IP-based infrastructure for nine million customers and led the deployment of innovative new technologies, products and services to deliver a reliable network and great customer experience. Prior to his West Division role, Shane served as Regional Vice President of Engineering for the California region, responsible for the oversight, guidance, direction and vision for all technical engineering aspects throughout our California footprint.
Shane holds a bachelor’s degree from Metropolitan State University, master’s degrees from Regis University and Denver University, and is pursuing a doctorate degree in Organizational Leadership.
Shane serves on the board of directors for Metro State University, the National Diversity Council, and Big Brothers Big Sisters. He is a former platoon sergeant for the U.S. Army.
Our team
Ashlie Singleton
Executive Board
Over the course of a 20-year career, Ashlie Singleton has worked for companies such as Target Stores, Nebraska Book Company: Neebo and Follett Higher Education Group. In 2017, Ashlie relocated to Queen Creek, AZ as Regional Manager, Sales & Operations with Follett to support Colleges and Universities across the state of Arizona and New Mexico, including Arizona State University and Sun Devil Campus Stores. Ashlie has been honored with Awards & Recognition for her contributions to Store Operations, Partnership & Cross-functional Collaboration and Inspirational Leadership.
Serving as the Regional Manager at Follett, Ashlie is proud to lead teams and drive results within the higher education and course material space positively impacting student retention and graduation rates and helping to make education more accessible for all. Ashlie also enjoys using her creative background to shape the campus store spaces that help students and fans celebrate their connection to colleges and universities. She is a driven and passionate collaborator and committed to leading authentically and embracing vulnerability.
Ashlie holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Kent State University and currently resides with her husband and children in Arizona.
Our team
Kara Bobroff
Senior Fellow
Kara is an Indigenous leader who has dedicated her career to working for positive change and Indigenous students and families. She is Dine’ and Lakota. She was the Founding Principal of the Albuquerque-based Native American Community Academy (NACA) and has more than 25 years of experience in Indigenous Education leading the effort to bring families at the forefront of community-led school design and by drawing upon the strengths of the community in which she serves to create a transformative mission and vision for NACA. In 2014, Kara founded the nation’s first network solely dedicated to Indigenous Education - NACA Inspired Schools Network who supports communities dedicated to creating schools of Excellence and Relevance in Indigenous Education. She was recognized by President Obama as one of 100 top social innovators in the nation, Kara is a Echoing Green Fellow, Pahara Aspen Fellow, Broad Fellow, and Ashoka Fellow and served to establish the first office of Identity, Equity and Transformation as the New Mexico Public Education Department Deputy Secretary of Identity, Equity, and Transformation to build a statewide focus on Equity and CRL education prior to founding One Generation. She serves and works to support early-stage innovations that build sustainable solutions for Indigenous communities, Indigenous Education, and Indigenous Leaders who are poised to impact systems change in senior-level roles in the government, philanthropic and nonprofit sector.
She has also been recognized with the Zia Award for University of New Mexico alumni for distinguished service in the field of education, as a “Woman of Influence'' by Albuquerque Business First, as a recipient of the New Mexico Ethics in Business Award, and as a recipient of the Excellence in Educational Leadership Award sponsored by the University Council for Educational Administration. Her volunteer roles have included serving as an advisory board member for Harvard Urban Principal Center, New Mexico Now, Explora Children's Museum, and Learning Alliance New Mexico, Education Reimagined, Currently, she serves as a board member for the New Mexico Dream Team and Emerita Member of the NACA Inspired Schools Network, Food Corps and Appleseed New Mexico, and an Equity Advisor to the NM Public Education's Statewide Language and Culture Division. Kara is a citizen of the Navajo Nation.
Our team
Aubrey L. Hicks
Managing Director, The Difference Engine
Aubrey L. Hicks is Managing Director of The Difference Engine (ASU wide) and Director, Los Angeles Programs for the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law. She uses she, her, and hers pronouns. Aubrey has a background in literature and library science and has held positions in publishing, academic administration, and project management. She is a voracious reader, who champions interdisciplinary study as a path toward equity. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Red Nation Celebration Institute.
Prior to joining ASU, Aubrey served as Executive Director of the USC Bedrosian Center, an applied research center focusing on governance and public enterprise. She was the Managing Editor, Journal of Public Policy. She also served as Program Coordinator at The POGIL Project, a national professional development organization for educators. Aubrey also served as an academic reference librarian and worked in academic publishing with Academic Press at Elsevier Science as well as Cornell University Press.
Born into a military family, she has lived in almost two dozen cities and towns across the U.S. and abroad. She holds a degree in English from Moravian University and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She currently lives on unceded land of the Tongva, Chumash & Kizh peoples.