Bala Balachandran (President)

Bala J. Balachandran, a Certified Public Manager, serves as the Chief Demographer/Senior Staff with the Planning & Development Department, City of Houston. He's been with the Department for 10 years. In that position, he is responsible for managing the analysis, process and policy development of demographic and research elements for planning activities, including data research, census data, demographic estimates, GIS, and related programs. He also serves as the department's liaison in sharing information, leveraging resources, and coordinating efforts related to planning, demographics, and socio-economic data.

Prior to joining the City of Houston, Balachandran served as Senior Demographer for the Houston-Galveston Area Council for some seven years. Earlier, he served as a Regional and Community Planner for the Oklahoma Economic Development Authority for about four years.

Balachandran has nearly two decades of experience in planning, socioeconomic, demographic, and GIS-related projects. He was the regional coordinator for the 1990 and 2000 Census Complete Count Committees and currently is assisting the Mayor's 2010 Complete Count Committee.

Balachandran is a graduate of Kansas State University, where he earned a master's degree in regional and community planning. He also holds a master's degree in economics.
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Dmitry Messen (Vice President)

Dmitry Messen is Forecast Program Manager for the Houston-Galveston Area Council, leading a group of socioeconomic modelers charged with developing long-range small-area demographic, economic, and land use forecasts for the Houston region. A quantitative social scientist with extensive expertise in statistical modeling, geographic information systems, and data management, he holds a Ph.D. in geography from Louisiana State University and an M.A. in geography from Moscow State University. Prior to joining H-GAC in October 2004, Messen worked for eight years at LSU's Center for Energy Studies, doing research in applied energy economics and teaching GIS, statistics, and economic geography.
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Barbara McCormick (Secretary)

Barbara McCormick has worked for the wellbeing of Houston's children through research and public policy advocacy since 1977. She is the former president and CEO of Children at Risk, a well-known nonprofit organization that advocates for children. McCormick developed the Quality of Life Indicators Model for the basic needs, health, safety, and education of the children of Harris County. She is author of the first edition of Growing Up in Houston: Assessing the Quality of Life of Our Children, which was published in 1994, and of subsequent editions in 1996, 1998, and 2000.

McCormick's community, state, and national leadership includes Interfaith Ministry, League of Women Voters, Episcopal Health Charities, Mental Health Needs Council, Urban Harvest, One Voice, and the Houston Opera Guild. She is a past president of the Board of Directors of the Immunization Partnership and serves on the Advisory Board of that organization. She is also Chair of the Advisory Board of the School Literacy and Culture Project at the Rice University Center for Education.
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Vincent Sanders (Treasurer)

Vincent L. Sanders is a Transportation Systems Planner for the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Texas. Sanders joined METRO in 1998 where he is responsible for maintaining socioeconomic and travel databases to generate reports on trip patterns, demographic profiles and patronage estimates for proposed transit service options and facilities.

Sanders has several years of experience in Transportation project development, transportation demand analysis and modeling software. Prior to joining METRO, he worked as a transportation consultant with RSM Services. Sanders earned a bachelor of science degree in Business Administration from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) and a Master of Science degree in Transportation Planning and Management from Texas Southern University.
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Max Beauregard (Board Member)

Max Beauregard is an independent consultant for GIS projects [geographic information systems] and demographic research with applications in planning, market research, transportation, environmental affairs, political analysis, and school enrollment forecasts. GIS is particularly useful in linking large independent data files to establish geographic relationships. Files from Census 2000 are extremely large and GIS facilitates its use with the immediate, value-added component of visualizing the data, particularly at the block level, for site selection and market research studies. The usability of block data is also enhanced with GIS because it can be aggregated to other geographic units such as voter precinct geography for comparison to voting records. Beauregard's most recent work examines trends in Hispanic voters.

Max has architecture and city planning degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and has been employed in Houston for more than two decades.
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Margaret Drain (Board Member)

Margaret Drain is the senior research associate for the Houston Community College System. Hired in ’95 as the first Institutional Researcher for HCCS, she has been instrumental in developing the eight-person office and its projects. Her major responsibility is performing environmental scanning—a task that involves demographic analysis, college mapping, needs analysis, enrollment projections, and facility planning. However, her expertise with student data and SPSS has kept her involved with problem solving, data accessing, and warehousing for HCCS. Her current studies in survey research also have drawn her into the office’s survey activities.

Before ’95, Drain spent 13 years in hospital patient accounts management and was self-employed as a marketing and management consultant. Drain received her B.S. in secondary education from Penn State and her MBA from Lamar University. She is nearing completion of work on her Ed.D. at the University of Houston.

Since ’97, Drain has been a member of the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), the Southern, Texas, and Gulf Coast Associations for Institutional Research (SAIR, TAIR, and GCAIR, respectively), the National Council of Community College Research and Planning (NCCCRP), and the Association for Women Administrators. She serves as NCCCRP regional director of District 8, Texas, and as TAIR’s treasurer, and has presented papers, conducted workshops, and held roundtables on a variety of institutional research topics at AIR and TAIR conferences.

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Jim Hofmeister (Board Member)

Jim Hofmeister, an independent consultant, was Director of Training and Economic Development for a United Way agency called Career and Recovery Resources, Inc. (formerly VGS, Inc.). The Agency’s mission is “To help people identify and overcome barriers to employment.” Jim is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in Economics, a 31-year resident of Houston, and has experience in working for Shell Oil Company, Dunhill Executive Search, and a major nonprofit agency. He previously served on the Board if Directors of CRR for six years with one year as Chair of the Board. He is active in community issues, is a graduate of Leadership Houston (Class IX), The Regional Leaders’ Forum, and is married with three grown children.
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Barbara Bailey Myers (Board Member)

Barbara Bailey Myers, president, Bailey Myers LLC and senior consultant, Kiley Advisors LLC, engages in commercial construction market research, construction firm systems and procedures analysis, and human resources consulting.

For 15 years, Myers was executive director of the Houston chapter of Associated Generaly Contractors of America. Earlier in a varied career, she was co-owner of Central Louisiana Alarms, a specialty contractor firm; personnel director for St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, and Texas Heart Institute; compensation analyst for First City National Bank; and recruiting coordinator for KPMG's Southwest Region.

Myers is active in the Greater Houston Partnership's Economic Analysis Panel, The Houston Economics Club, Commercial Real Estate Research Forum, AGC's Houston Employment Practices Committee, and the Society for Human Resources Management.
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Lynne Nguyen (Board Member)

Lynne Nguyen's biographical information to come.

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Paula Pipes

Paula Pipes provides consulting and research services with a focus on community and nonprofit organizations, religious congregations, and immigration. Prior to forming Pipes Research Services, she served as a research associate and project director at the University of Houston for the Coalition Ministries and Congregations Study, a national research project funded by the Lilly Endowment. She has a strong background in data systems and extensive experience in Human Resources, specializing in the design and implementation of human resource information management systems.

Pipes is author of Focus on Faith-Based Partnerships: Coalitions and Congregations in Social Service Ministry, which provides nonprofit and congregational leaders strategies to strengthen their alliances. In addition to applied research, she has participated in academic studies and published coauthored articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Forces, Social Science Quarterly, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Religious Research, and Sociology of Religion.

Pipes is also a research associate in the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston, where she earned her M.A. in sociology.

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Christina Todd (Board Member)

Christina Todd previously served as TEDA/Houston's president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer.

As Director of Instructional Programs for the Lone Star College System, Todd focuses on providing strong educational opportunities for students through evaluation and partnership building. Her responsibilities include program review, curriculum submissions and maintenance, high school articulation, Tech Prep, dual credit, and Perkins grant direction.

Previously, Todd provided labor market analysis for TechForce 2000, serving education, workforce, and economic development agencies throughout the Gulf Coast Region. Her background includes research for the Taxpayers' Research Council of Galveston County, service as a legislative intern with Congressman Lloyd Doggett's Washington office, and a stint as partner in a legal evidence services company.

Todd earned a Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Denver. She spends her free time on political activities and volunteering for organizations such as the American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Montgomery County.
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John Witson (Board Member)

John Witson is principal of Voter History, providing political database software for political consulting, and Juror History, an on-site juror profiling software.
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