White House Expert Andrea Kane Joins Brookings “Welfare Reform & Beyond” Initiative

Andrea Kane, who has served on the White House Domestic Policy council since 1997, will join the Brookings Institution as a visiting fellow on January 8.

Kane was most recently a special assistant to President Clinton, leading a four-person team responsible for the administration’s policies on welfare reform and working families. Her focus was on responsible fatherhood, teenage pregnancy prevention, and a number of other related issues.

Prior to joining the White House, Kane was the welfare program director at the National Governors’ Association, where she helped governors implement welfare reform.

At Brookings, Kane will join a two-year project called “Welfare Reform & Beyond,” which is aimed at synthesizing and disseminating research to Congress, advocates, and the public which can inform the debate over reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform law. The reauthorization must be completed by October 2002. Kane will be responsible for coordinating the project’s outreach activities.

“Andrea brings to this project her experience at the highest levels of government,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings and a co-director of the Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative. “At the same time, her experience at the state and local levels will be invaluable.”

In addition to her work on the national and state levels, Kane spent seven years working on welfare and budget issues at the Fairfax County (Virginia) Department of Family Services, and was the Research and Communications Manager at Houston Works, a job training organization in Texas. Before that, she spent three years as a program and budget analyst at the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, an arm of the state legislature.

Kane holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas.

The Welfare Reform & Beyond initiative is co-directed by three Brookings senior fellows. Ron Haskins spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, most recently as staff director, where he was responsible for welfare issues; Isabel Sawhill is a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, where she worked on welfare and other domestic social programs; and R. Kent Weaver, a political scientist, is the author of Ending Welfare as We Know It (Brookings, 2000).