Biographies

Staff

Peter A. Creticos, President and Executive Director

Peter serves as chief executive officer of the Institute.

He has held several other positions in not-for-profit institutions, academia, and government He was a Research Fellow at the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University in Chicago and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business, at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Roosevelt University, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. and at Governors State University. He was also a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University.

Prior to establishing the Institute in 2000, Mr. Creticos served as the Vice President for the Midwest Regional Office in Chicago, Illinois, of the National Alliance of Business. Previously he served as Assistant to the President at the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce and President of the for-profit subsidiary, Center for Business Management. He also served as lead staff on economic and workforce development for the Illinois State Senate President, as an independent consultant and researcher on economic and workforce development issues, and as a Field Representative at the Council of State Governments.

Mr. Creticos is currently a member of the Economic Development Committee for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). In September 2020, he was appointed to serve as a member of the Equity Task Force of the Illinois Workforce Innovation Board. He served for 10 years as a board member of the Chicago Workforce Investment Board, the Service Delivery Committee, and the Workforce Investment Act Performance Review Subcommittee. He was a member of the advisory board to Enlace, the community development organization for the Mexican immigrant Little Village neighborhood in Chicago. He also served on the board of the Pilsen-Little Village Community Management Organization, an affiliate of the Pilsen-Little Village Community Mental Health Center, Inc.

Mr. Creticos also consults privately as Peter A. Creticos, LTD.

Mr. Creticos earned his Ph.D. at the Graduate School at Northwestern University. He did his work on a skills-based closeness of fit strategy in job matching at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Science at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He also has a Master of Management at Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis. Mr. Creticos was a Coro Foundation Fellow in St. Louis.

Fellows

Dr. Carlos Baradello is an investor, advisor, public speaker, and university professor. A leading innovation and entrepreneurship practitioner, he draws his understanding from his broad global business and academic experience, deep technical knowledge, and understanding of the realities innovators encounter in organizations both large and small. His experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world has enabled him to gain key lessons for high-growth ventures to scale globally.

Dr. Baradello's interests include new global business creation, venture funding, business acceleration for "born global" startups, and global scaling for “foreign-born” startups in emerging economies. He is a practitioner of these concepts, as a Co-Founder/GP of ALAYA Capital Partners, a pioneer VC fund in Argentina and Chile, and Founder/Managing Partner of Sausalito Ventures, an enabler for Latin American ventures to scale globally. In addition, he is a public speaker and corporate advisor to Fortune 500 companies, Economic Development Agencies, and NGOs across the world.

In addition, Dr. Baradello has teaching responsibilities across four continents as a member of the faculty at Hult International Business School, the Danish Technical University (Denmark), Universidad Católica de Cordoba (Argentina), ESPAE/ESPOL (Ecuador), and the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing, China), etc. He was the founder of the groundbreaking Silicon Valley Immersion program while serving as Associate Dean for Global and Executive Programs at the University of San Francisco. After earning his Engineering Degree from Argentina’s Catholic University of Cordoba, Carlos earned his MSc from the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) and his Ph.D. in Electrical/Computer Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University (USA).

For over 30 years, Dr. Baradello was in the telecommunications and computer industry with progressively senior executive roles at ITT, NYNEX, Digital Equipment Corporation, Advanced Fibre Communications (IPO 1996), and Motorola, where he was the company’s Corporate Vice President for the Latin America and Caribbean region. He has authored over 50 technical and management papers and has been awarded six USA/EU patents for his inventions.

Dr. Baradello is fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian.

You can read more about Dr. Baradello via his regularly updated blog. These writings are the foundation of his future book titled Soft Landing in Silicon Valley.™.

Ronnie L. Bryant, CEcD, FM, HLM, is currently Principal of Ronnie L. Bryant, LLC, in Charlotte, NC, and Chairs the Institute’s Board of Directors.

Mr. Bryant previously was President and CEO of the Charlotte Regional Partnership where he promoted the 16-county Charlotte USA region as a premier location for expanding and relocating businesses. With more than 30 years of technical, managerial, and economic development expertise, Bryant is nationally known for establishing and implementing successful economic development programs, with a strong emphasis on existing industry expansion and retention, regionalism, and marketing. The editors of Site Selection magazine have recognized Bryant for excellence in the field of economic development by naming three organizations he led, those in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Charlotte, to its list of Top 10 economic development groups in the nation. He is the only economic development professional to have achieved this distinction. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ranked him No. 25 on its list of top 50 business leaders, and Charlotte – The City Magazine named Bryant No. 30 in its list of Charlotte’s Fifty Most Powerful.

Prior to joining Charlotte Regional Partnership, Bryant was president and chief operating officer of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance where he marketed the region and collaborated with regional economic development agencies to develop and implement job creation strategies. Before working in Pittsburgh, Bryant was the senior vice president of the Economic Development Division for the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association where he has been credited with the development of job creation strategies that resulted in more than 117,000 jobs within a five-year period. These professional skills grew from leading the development team at the Shreveport, La., Chamber of Commerce, working as a development consultant, and holding managerial and technical positions at AT&T’s Western Electric facility.

Bryant, a certified economic developer (CEcD) since 1991, is a graduate of Louisiana State University in Shreveport and the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma (OU/EDI) in Norman. While attending OU/EDI, he received the American Economic Development Council’s Robert B. Cassell Leadership Award for excellence in leadership and scholarship. He currently serves as the immediate past dean, as well as a member of the OU/EDI executive board and faculty. Bryant has lectured internationally and nationally on issues related to economic development marketing, professional development and organizational management, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at UNC Charlotte Belk College of Business.

Bryant is well known in economic development circles. He is a past chairman of the board for the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), which has designated him as a Fellow Member (FM) and an Honorary Life Member (HLM) for furthering the profession of economic development as a teacher and inspiration to others in many communities. Currently, he serves as a governor’s appointee to the North Carolina Economic Development Board and is a board member of CoreNet Global’s Carolinas Chapter. Among his other professional affiliations are the International Asset Management Council (IAMC), the Urban Land Institute (ULI), and both the North Carolina and South Carolina Economic Development Associations. Bryant’s civic participation includes board memberships with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Charlotte Community Advisory Committee, the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, Charlotte Research Institute, The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s Charlotte Industry Roundtable, the Charlotte City Club and The North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

Gustavo A. Giraldo brings more than 40 years of experience in the field in workforce diversity and development.

From late 2011 through early 2019, Mr. Giraldo was Chief of Diversity and Strategic Development at the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority where he directed the design and implementation of a strategic diversity plan ensuring the inclusion, development, and participation of disadvantaged, minority, and women business enterprises. He also initiated and fostered programs to improve racial, gender, and ethnic diversification of the construction trades.

Between 2007 and 2011, Mr. Giraldo was Deputy Procurement Officer at the Chicago Department of Procurement Services for the City of Chicago. This followed his service of more than nine years as Managing Deputy Commissioner at the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development at the City of Chicago.

Previously, he held management, training, education, and staff positions at the Illinois Department of Transportation, Prologue High School/Alternative Schools Network at the City of Chicago, Accion Latinoamericana de Aurora (Illinois), the Kane County (Illinois) CETA agency, and Aurora (IL) School District #129 as a bilingual teacher.

Mr. Giraldo earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bilingual and Multicultural Education from National Louis University and is an Executive Scholars Graduate from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Swati Ghosh is the Senior Advisor, Inclusive Economic Development at New Growth Innovation Network (NGIN). Prior to NGIN, she served as the Senior Director of Research at International Economic Development Council (IEDC), where she led the research department in addition to contributing to technical assistance and training programs. Swati has nearly 15 years of experience in economic and community development, including analyzing and designing economic development strategies in entrepreneurship and workforce development, inclusive growth, economic recovery and diversification, and organizational capacity building, among others. She has authored several papers and articles on economic development and related topics. Swati has a Master of Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Urban Planning from the School of Planning & Architecture, India.

Jeff Marcella brings 20 years of workforce development experience in the public and nonprofit sectors across the spectrum of policy and program development and management to his work as a consultant to nonprofits and governments in areas of strategic planning, policy and advocacy, project development and management, partnership and system building, and organizational development.

As a consultant, Jeff works to support government and nonprofit organizations with their strategic planning, program design and development, program management, organizational development and public policy activities. Recent projects include developing a strategic plan for the San Diego public workforce system; developing and administering a comprehensive benchmarking of Adult Education services in Indiana and assisting the state government in developing a strategy for system improvements and professional development of Adult Education providers; assisting the Chicago's Career Tech initiative in improving its IT industry training offerings and better linking internship activities to classroom training, and providing successful grant writing and policy development assistance to numerous workforce boards and nonprofits. Jeff has led national and regional workshops on workforce "sector" strategies, enhancing workforce service through stronger linkages to industry and the education system. In all of his work, Jeff leverages deep experience in leading successful workforce initiatives and broad knowledge of workforce programs across the US.

Jeff spent eleven years in roles of increasing responsibility at the City of Chicago Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development where he led the department’s policy and strategic planning work. He developed policies and procedures for MOWD’s 100 service providers and led the department’s launch of key initiatives including the local Welfare to Work and Workforce Investment Act programs. His expertise in the emerging “sector” model of job-training initiatives was built through the creation of Chicago’s nationally recognized “Sector Center” workforce hubs and enhanced through supporting sector initiatives in New York City and Washington, DC and was recognized when Jeff was named a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Sector Skills Academy.

Prior related experience has included positions managing the Chicago Neighborhood JobStart program for the Chicago Community Trust and delivering a welfare-to-work program at the Jubilee Association in Pittsburgh. Jeff’s role at JobStart demonstrates the integrated approach to policy and program development and project management that he champions. In a rapid project launch supported through the 2010 economic stimulus, Jeff and his team quickly converted a rough framework developed by a public/private team into a fully-developed, multi-partner program model, coordinating ten grantee agencies to successfully place more than 1,600 Chicagoans in supported employment and maintain a high proportion of participants through successful program completion and permanent job placement.

Jeff holds a Masters in Public Policy and a Masters in Divinity from the University of Chicago and a Bachelors degree from Georgetown University.

Diana Polson, Ph.D., has worked on two Institute projects. One is as part of the Institute's external evaluation team of the New App for Making it in America project in Pittsburgh. She also was a key contributor to a project examining the challenges to apprenticeships in the U.S.

She has worked as a policy analyst for universities, policy think tanks, and applied research centers. Prior to joining the Institute on the New App project, she worked with the Keystone Research Center in Pennsylvania on both the evaluation and program side of this Pittsburgh-based workforce and economic development project that aims to fuel local manufacturing and train individuals in a maker space-based apprenticeship program.

Diana earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, where she completed her dissertation on care work and the low-wage economy. Previously, Diana served as a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project where she coordinated a survey of more than 4,300 low-wage workers in NYC, Chicago, and LA and co-authored several reports and articles on the research findings.

Diana has more than a decade of experience partnering on research initiatives and organizing campaigns on a range of economic justice issues, including wage theft, cross-national family leave policies, workforce development, and labor-community alliances. She enjoys working at the nexus of applied research and low-wage worker organizing.

Lance Pressl, Ph.D., has extensive experience in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. He currently serves as Non-Resident Senior Policy Fellow at the Institute for Work and the Economy.

He most recently was Managing Director at the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Institute of Technology. Previously, Pressl served as President of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Foundation where he developed and implemented programs and events promoting long-term economic growth through innovation-based economic development. Highlights of his tenure as Foundation President include Founding and leading “The Territorial Review of the Chicagoland Tri-State Metropolitan Area”, the first of its kind study in the United States conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); creating the InnovateNow! Initiative and producing annual Innovation Summits; founding the Illinois Innovation Index; leading the effort to establish the Illinois Innovation Council and re-establishing The Illinois Science Technology Coalition.

Pressl began his professional career in state government in 1979, serving as a budget analyst for the Illinois Bureau of the Budget and later as the special assistant to the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. After pursuing his graduate studies, he joined a small Chicago-based venture capital firm as vice president and held several leadership positions at Philip Morris Companies, Inc., including director of issues management and director of corporate affairs. In 1996, Pressl was named president of the Civic Federation, the oldest taxpayer watchdog organization in the country. The leadership he demonstrated at the Civic Federation earned him a gubernatorial appointment to the Illinois Accountability Council.

In 2000, Pressl was the Democratic Candidate for the United States Eighth Congressional District of Illinois. His congressional race is the subject of the book, Challenging the Incumbent, Congressional Quarterly Press, 2004. Later, Pressl was appointed senior associate for government and public policy for the American Council on Education and previously served as vice president for federal relations and public policy at the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington, D.C.

Pressl was awarded the Ford Fellowship for Regional Sustainable Development in the spring of 2008. He chairs the Economic Development Committee for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and sits on several boards. He earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University.

James M. Schultz graduated from the University of Denver, receiving his B.S.B.A. in 1969 and his M.B.A. in 1971. Joining Walgreens Store Operations in 1971, he moved to the Human Resource Division in 1973. Retiring in 2004, his responsibilities covered a wide range of H.R. areas: training, management and executive development, productivity improvement, knowledge management, human factors engineering, systems documentation, human resource planning and information systems, and media production. He currently operates a private consulting firm, Pretty Good Consulting, in Wilmette, Illinois.

He served as a member of the Illinois Occupational Skills Standards and Credentialing Committee, a group working towards standardized and readily recognizable and transferable job competency designations. He recently finished serving on the Illinois Workforce Investment Board, a group advising the Governor about optimizing workforce development programs.

Mr. Schultz is Past-President and Honorary Director of the Board of the Jewish Vocational Services of Chicago, a non-sectarian agency providing vocational and rehabilitation services for the Chicagoland area. He belongs to the International Society for Performance Improvement, the American Society for Training & Development, the Human Resource Planning Society, the Society for Human Resource Management, and the National Center for Nonprofit Boards.

Mr. Schultz was a principal researcher on the Institute's project on the integration of new immigrants in the workplace.

Mary V. L. Wright Serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute and Chairs the Institute’s Achieving the Promise of Work initiative. A manager at the SHRM Foundation, she is responsible for developing an apprenticeship program for HR specialists.

Ms. Wright has many years of experience connecting the public and private sectors in municipal finance, government affairs, and workforce development as a project leader, facilitator, and subject matter expert.

Previously, Ms. Wright was a director at Jobs for the Future (JFF) where she designed and supervised the completion of foundation, government and employer-funded projects on topics including expanding employability skills, developing apprenticeship and work-based learning strategies, utilizing labor market information to determine educational focus, better hiring and training practices for people with disabilities, improving entry-level jobs for the retail sector, determining the correct educational focus for specific geographic areas including the state of Florida and Columbus Ohio, and an in-depth analysis of green infrastructure jobs.

Prior to joining JFF, she served as a director at The Conference Board in New York City, driving its work in workforce readiness, business, and education partnerships. She also focused on improving the employment outcomes for people with disabilities through research and convenings. Ms. Wright co-authored or acted as project director on several key Conference Board reports regarding workforce readiness skills, including Are They Really Read to Work? and The Ill-Prepared Workforce.

Ms. Wright received a Master of Business Administration in public/nonprofit management from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Affairs from Connecticut College.