More About Linda and Sara

Linda C. Babcock is the James Mellon Walton Professor of Economics at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also served as director of the Ph.D. Program and Interim Dean at the Heinz School.

Dr. Babcock grew up in Altadena, California, and attended public schools there before earning her bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Irvine. She subsequently attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she completed a master's degree and a Ph.D. in economics. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation as well as several university teaching awards. She has served as a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Babcock specializes in negotiation and dispute resolution. Her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, industrial relations, and law journals, including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the Journal of Legal Studies, The New York Times, the Economist, the Harvard Business Review, the International Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times of London and the International Review of Law and Economics. She also consults for public sector, not-for-profit, and private sector organizations.

Dr. Babcock is a member of the American Economic Association, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, the Economic Science Association, the International Association for Conflict Management, the American Law and Economics Association, and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She is currently serving on the Behavioral Economics Roundtable of the Russell Sage Foundation and as a Review Panel Member at the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Babcock lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Mark Wessel, Dean of the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University, and their daughter.

Sara Laschever was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey and rural Connecticut. She attended the Kent School and earned her bachelor's degree in English Literature from Princeton University and a master's degree in creative writing from Boston University. She has worked as a writer and editor for almost 25 years and her work has been published by the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Harvard Business Review, Vogue, Mademoiselle, the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, the Boston Review, and many other publications. She has taught writing at Boston University and privately edited books published by the Harvard Business School Press, Perseus Books, Hyperion Books, and Alfred A. Knopf. She also worked for three years as a senior writer and editor at Mercer Management Consulting in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Her interest in women's life and career obstacles led her to work as a research associate and principal interviewer for Project Access, a landmark Harvard University study funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the Bunting Institute. Project Access explored impediments to women's careers in science—the hindrances, both internal and external, that prevent women from rising to the tops of their fields. For Project Access, Ms. Laschever interviewed over 200 scientists, both men and women, from all over the country, wrote biographical sketches of each, and summarized her findings in a lengthy document now archived at the Murray Center for Research on Women at Harvard University. Ms. Laschever's work on Project Access contributed to the publication of two seminal studies in this field, Gender Differences in Science Careers: The Project Access Study and Who Succeeds in Science? The Gender Dimension, both by G. Sonnert, assisted by G. Holton.

In 1994, Ms. Laschever co-founded the journal millennium pop, a quarterly journal (now a web-site) devoted to serious commentary about popular culture. She has appeared on the Boston area television discussion programs, "The Group," "Greater Boston," and "New England Cable NewsNight" as a cultural commentator.

Sara Laschever lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, the music critic Tim Riley, and their two sons. She can be contacted by email at sklasch2001@yahoo.com.

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