Staff

Michael T. Childress was the Executive Director of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, a state government agency created by the General Assembly in 1992 to bring a future-oriented perspective to decisionmaking in the Commonwealth. The work of the Center included research, policy analysis, communications with all branches of government, and public outreach. Mr. Childress received his B.A. from the University of Kentucky in 1984 and an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1986—both in political science. From 1988 to 1993, he was an analyst at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. While at RAND, he authored numerous studies on topics ranging from demographic trends in the third world to the implications of declining budgets for the U.S. Army. In August of 1993, he became the only executive director of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. Mr. Childress oversaw the Center's numerous research activities and authored reports on the future of tobacco, entrepreneurism, child care, technology use, electronic commerce, state and local taxation, immigration, health, and transportation.

Billie Sebastian Dunavent was a Senior Research Assistant and Webmaster with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. She holds a B.A. from the University of Kentucky. From 1988 to 1993, Ms. Dunavent worked with the Legislative Research Commission and the Long-Term Policy Development Subcommittee, which designed the concept of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. In her post with the Center, she authored and contributed to numerous reports and articles and had been co-editor of Foresight. Ms. Dunavent served as the Center’s webmaster, scanning project and Horizon coordinator and writer, and general office manager, and with Mark Schirmer produced the lion’s share of the Center’s CD-ROM projects. She is an avid horsewoman who bred and showed Arabians with her late husband Rick.

Suzanne King assumed a wide range of roles after joining the Center as a Staff Assistant in 2001. An experienced executive secretary and entrepreneur, Suzanne has served on the General Assembly staff; as Executive Secretary to the Kentucky Assistive Technology Network, a division of the Department for the Blind and for the Kentucky Developmental Disabilities Council; and as a business owner and general contractor. At the Center, Suzanne assumed responsibility for design work and all layout and acted as a liaison to printers; managed the logistics of the Center’s highly successful annual conference, as well as other Center-sponsored forums and meetings; assumed responsibility for creating and disseminating public records of meetings; and managed the Center’s library and requests for information and publications. Her daughter is Marion Anna Moore.

Mark Schirmer was a Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, whose research and reports have explored diverse topics, including early childhood education, broadband access, immigration, alternative energy, and the impact of federal legislation designed to control SPAM or viral e-mail. In addition to his research and writing, Mr. Schirmer is skilled in presentation, web design and development, graphic content for Web and Center publications, videography, the creation of CD-ROMs, and software problem solving. He holds a degree in communication studies from the University of Kentucky where he focused on interpersonal dynamics.

Pete Schirmer brought to the Center considerable statistical and writing skills and contributed to the Center’s volume of work by authoring several publications, including Farms, Factories and Free Trade: Rural Kentucky in the Global Economy; $5.8 Billion and Change: An Exploration of the Long- Term Budgetary Impact of Trends Affecting the Commonwealth; The Circuits Come to Town: An Analysis of Technology Use and Electronic Delivery of Government Services in Kentucky, and Civil Society in Kentucky. He also co-authored several works including the Center’s inaugural trends report, The Context of Change: Trends, Innovations and Forces Affecting Kentucky’s Future and the trends report, The Leadership Challenge Ahead: Trends That Will Dominate the Future Agenda. In addition, he authored and co-authored chapters for the second trends report, Exploring the Frontier of the Future, as well as numerous articles for Foresight. Pete launched the Center’s Web site and created the award-winning Kentucky State Budget Game. One of his final contributions to the Center was the Center’s inaugural CD-ROM, a massive undertaking which Pete conceived and brought to fruition, complete with over 40 minutes of movies and the Center’s entire body of work published to date. He already holds a Bachelors Degree from the University of Kentucky, a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and a Masters in Business Administration from Georgetown University.

Michal Smith-Mello was a Senior Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. In that capacity, she was principal author of the Center’s 1994 biennial trends report, The Context of Change, as well as reports on rural development, workforce development, and, with Michael Childress, on entrepreneurship. She created the Center’s quarterly publication, Foresight, and served as its editor. Ms. Smith-Mello wrote or edited numerous articles, reports, and publications. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, she has a B.A. and an M.A.

Amy Watts was a Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. In this capacity, she provided statistical data analysis using a variety of methods and models. She authored and coauthored publications covering a range of topics from the future of postsecondary education to health care coverage, the aging population, and regional economic growth, among others. Her professional activities include past adjunct teaching positions at local universities, including the Martin School of Public Policy at the University of Kentucky (UK), and service as Secretary of the Board for the Kentucky Economics Association (2004-2007). She holds a B.A. in economics from UK. In 2001, she received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of New Mexico with concentrations in econometrics and environmental and natural resource economics.