Staff Bios
David Wilkinson
David Wilkinson is the Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. He leads White House efforts to identify and scale better, more effective social solutions, advancing Presidential priorities that strengthen communities and enable upward economic mobility. This involves identifying programs that work better through use of data and evidence as well as scaling what works through smarter use of federal resources and cross-sector collaboration.
Mr. Wilkinson leads an Office of Social Innovation that supports the development and launch of outcomes-focused solutions across a range of domestic policy priorities from education and job growth to economic development and healthy communities. In addition, Mr. Wilkinson coordinates efforts to attract and deploy America’s talent, from national service and volunteerism to employing better management strategy, in support of effective community solutions. He is a co-founder of the Data-Driven Justice Initiative.
Mr. Wilkinson draws from an extensive background in impact finance, social entrepreneurship, evidence-based policy and organization management. He previously served the White House as Senior Policy Advisor for Social Finance and Innovation, assigned to the Office of Social Innovation and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. For the Office of Social Innovation, he led a range of initiatives including Pay for Success, evidence-based policy, and impact finance. At CEQ, Mr. Wilkinson served as the lead for green finance. His work spanned CEQ’s portfolio, with a focus on market development, financial innovation and ladders to economic opportunity as they connect to infrastructure, water resources, climate resilience and renewable energy. Mr. Wilkinson currently serves as the US Government Observer to the Global Social Impact Investment Steering Group, the successor to the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce.
Prior to his role at the White House, Mr. Wilkinson served as Executive Director of City First Enterprises, a federally regulated nonprofit bank holding company and incubator of social finance solutions. At City First, Mr. Wilkinson designed and directed successful new initiatives in community development finance, helping to create jobs and stabilize vulnerable communities. He led the development, financial structuring and launch of innovative solutions in impact investing, affordable housing and community facilities finance, small business and nonprofit lending, and community crowdfunding.
Mr. Wilkinson previously co-founded and helped lead a successful effort to launch a start-up community development bank in New Haven, CT. He also served as Executive Director of Common Cause New Jersey, an 8,000-member organization that fostered local civic engagement, helping citizens pass laws in over 100 municipalities and launching a new high school civics curriculum.
Mr. Wilkinson has served on the board of the City First Foundation where he was a founding director. He was selected by Next American City Magazine as a member of its Next American Vanguard, an annual “40 under 40” award honoring urban innovators. Mr. Wilkinson served as a Jane Addams Fellow at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School on Philanthropy. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School.
Kayvon Behroozian
Kayvon Behroozian serves as a Policy Advisor in the Office of Social Innovation and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He focuses primarily on criminal justice reform policy, working closely with state and local government officials, as well as service providers throughout the country, to improve treatment delivery and accessibility while reducing the unnecessary incarceration of people struggling with mental illness and substance-use disorder. He works to promote evidence-based treatment interventions and criminal justice policies through the Data-Driven Justice initiative to help divert populations that are disproportionately incarcerated into better treatment and support options. Additionally, Kayvon assists with the President’s federal evidence-agenda, working with federal agencies who have committed to implementing evidence-based practices by using already existing resources to improve public services and internal processes through improved evidence capacity. Kayvon has been part of the Obama Administration since 2014, serving in multiple capacities at the U.S. Department of Energy prior to his time at the White House. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from Whitman College.
David Groves
David Groves is a Senior Policy Advisor jointly in the White House Office of Social Innovation and the Council on Environmental Quality where he facilitates the development of Pay for Success transactions and other uses of private capital to address America's natural resources challenges. David works on issues ranging from the restoration of forests, wetlands, and species habitat to increasing agricultural conservation practices to developing energy efficiency programs. David has worked for a number of conservation-focused organizations including one he founded in 2012, holds an MBA from Presidio Graduate School, and loves exploring America's abundant natural treasures.
Katherine Klem
Katherine Klem leads Pay for Success initiatives across issue areas of housing, education, health – including the opioid crisis – and other domains with social outcomes as a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Social Innovation and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Previously, Katherine worked for the federal Social Innovation Fund, organized labor, charter schools, the American Cancer Society, then-Mayor Bloomberg, and Governor Hickenlooper in Colorado. She holds a MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia and has been named a US Presidential Scholar. When not working, she loves playing with her puppy and eating Thai food.
Erica Pincus
Erica Pincus is a Policy Advisor and Special Assistant for the White House Office of Social Innovation. She supports the Office’s full portfolio of initiatives, working to measurably advance ladders to economic opportunity, equity, and justice by helping to catalyze an outcomes-driven social sector. Erica supports the development of data-driven and technology-enabled solutions across a range of domestic policy priorities, including criminal justice reform, benefits eligibility, and the My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Previously, Erica worked as a management consultant, where she supported commercial, federal, and nonprofit clients, and led a social impact fellowship providing strategic guidance to social enterprises internationally. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Laura Tomasko
Laura Tomasko is a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Social Innovation and Deputy Associate Director for Public Engagement at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Laura's portfolio features public-philanthropic collaborations and impact investing. She works on a variety of policy initiatives focused on building a more data-driven, outcomes-focused social sector, including My Brother's Keeper. Previously, she worked at the Council on Foundations, where she started an impact investing initiative and helped develop the Public-Philanthropic Partnership Initiative. Before joining the Council, she held roles at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the Central New York Community Foundation, and The Children’s Aid Society in New York City. The World Economic Forum named Laura a Global Shaper. Laura holds a BA from Occidental College and a MPA from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where she served as the Vernon Snow Fellow in Nonprofits Management.
Beadsie Woo
Beadsie Woo is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Social Innovation and in the Technology and Innovation Division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Her portfolio includes working with agencies to deepen their evidence capacity as well as use available instruments to use and disseminate evidence of what works. She also works on data-driven strategies for criminal justice reform. Prior to joining the White House, Beadsie was a Senior Associate in the Center for Community and Economic Opportunity at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. There, her work to increase financial stability for families and children focused on strategies that facilitated savings and asset development and protected asset holdings. She co-authored Weathering the Recession: The Financial Crisis and Family Wealth Changes in Low-Income Neighborhoods, which examines what happened to assets, debts, and home equity for families living in low-income neighborhoods during the Great Recession. Additionally, Beadsie managed the foundation’s grants that focused on the use of neuroscience to build and strengthen executive function skills and that used housing as a platform for supportive services. Before joining the Casey Foundation, Beadsie was the Senior Economist for the Corporation for Enterprise Development where she led the development and production of its annual state benchmarking tools on economic development and asset building, among other research projects. Beadsie has an A.B. in Economics from Davidson College, MPP in International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina.