Kara Segal

About Kara Segal

Public policy professional with a background in management and research and a focus on economic justice. Strength in problem-solving, relationship-building, and strategy development.

Experience

1. Research Manager, Labor and Employment Portfolio

   California Policy Lab

   Aug 2022 — Present

   Leads multi-project labor research portfolio, working with government partners to generate actionable insights on pressing policy issues. Experienced in team leadership, delivering high-impact policy research, securing competitive grants, and translating complex findings for policymakers and public audiences.• Builds and maintains strategic partnerships with state agencies—including the CA Labor & Workforce Development Agency, Employment Development Department, CA Workforce Development Board, and Department of Aging—as well as national partners, strengthening collaboration and advancing research.• Manages research projects on labor and economic policy, overseeing staff, timelines, and deliverables, identifying research needs and opportunities, and ensuring alignment with partner priorities.• Guides dissemination of high-impact research, presenting at national policy conferences, creating publications on Short-Time Compensation, worker recovery from the pandemic (forthcoming), and the Los Angeles minimum wage, and improving CPL’s labor webpages to maximize policy and public impact.• Secures research funding by writing successful grant proposals (e.g, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, CPR3: Collaborative for Public Health Research), developing scopes of work for government contracts, and ensuring timely reporting and compliance.• Strengthens operations and culture for a 7–10 person research team, leading regular team meetings, instituting recurring project check-ins and code review practices, and improving onboarding, analysis planning, and documentation systems while facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing.• Contributes to a broad portfolio of labor and workforce research projects, including evaluations of the RESEA program, Short-Time Compensation, CA workforce programs (CAAL-Skills), and studies on older workers and the economic recovery of job losers after COVID-19, supporting and conducting project design, analysis, and dissemination.

Education

• University of California, Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy

  Master of Public Policy

  2018 — 2020

• Brown University

  Bachelor of Arts (BA), Education Studies

  2006 — 2010

• Marlborough School

  High School Diploma

  1999 — 2005

• Bank Street College of Education

  Urban Education Semester

  2009 — 2009