Center for Policy Design and Governance Leadership and Staff

Saba is founding director of the Center for Policy Design and Governance at the Maxwell School and its affiliated Policy Design Studio, is founding co-director of the Computational Institutional Science Lab, and founding director of the Institutional Grammar Research Initiative. The IGRI is a National Science Foundation-funded network of scholars from around the world who have a shared interest in institutional analysis. Saba is also a senior research associate in the Maxwell School's Center for Policy Research.

Saba joined the Maxwell School in 2017. She is currently the Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy, an associate professor in the Public Administration and International Affairs Department, and director of its acclaimed master of public administration (M.P.A.) program. Her research focuses on policy design, collaborative policymaking, institutional theory and analysis, and regulatory implementation and compliance. She has studied these topics in the contexts of food and environmental policy.

Tomás Olivier is an assistant professor of public administration and international affairs and senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research. He researches the governance of natural resources in the United States and Argentina.

Olivier studies how governments, users and organizations interact and create formal arrangements to sustainably manage water resources. One of his long-standing projects is on the governance of the New York City watersheds, the largest unfiltered drinking water system in the U.S.  

After earning a bachelor's degree in his home country of Argentina, Olivier received a Ph.D. in government and public policy from the University of Arizona in 2017. Prior to joining the Maxwell School, he completed a postdoc at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and worked as an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University for three years.

Julia oversees project management, strategic communications and research development for the Center for Policy Design and Governance (CPDG). She supports the director with strategic planning, partnership development and performance tracking across all center programs and initiatives.

Julia also manages all in-person and virtual events, including workshops, trainings, conferences and seminar series, and the Research to Practice Brief series, which translates complex scholarly research into accessible insights for non-expert readers worldwide.