Randy Albelda is a professor of economics and senior research fellow at the Center for Social Policy at University of Massachusetts Boston. She has worked as research director of the Massachusetts State Senate's Taxation Committee and the legislature's Special Commission on Tax Reform. Her research and teaching covers a broad range of economic policies affecting low-income women and families. In addition to many academic journal articles and policy reports, she is coauthor of the books Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Wage Discrimination; and The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual.  Albelda co-led the Bridging the Gaps project bringing together researchers and advocates from nine states and Washington DC to examine the gaps between basic needs and earnings in light of welfare reform in the 1990s.  Albelda recently co-authored the report "Women in the Down Economy: Impacts of the Recession and the Stimulus in Massachusetts."