Staff

Katie Zafft, Ph.D., is a Senior Program Manager II at the National Policing Institute. She joined NPI in November 2024 to direct the Law Enforcement Knowledge Lab, a federally-funded effort to identify and disseminate evidence-based, innovative policing practices, training, and technical assistance. Previously, Dr. Zafft managed the policing and evaluation portfolio of work at the…

Kira Piel is the Staff Accountant at the National Policing Institute (NPI). She brings more than 20 years of comprehensive experience in the public and private sectors, including positions in accounting, financial analysis, and audit for Fortune 100 companies and small businesses. Kira graduated from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelor of Science in…

Brooke Marston, M.S., is a research associate at the National Policing Institute (NPI). She joined NPI as a graduate assistant in 2023. Prior to that, Brooke was a research associate at the University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy for five years. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Ohio State…

Dr. Andrea M. Headley is an assistant professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and an affiliate fellow at the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law. At the heart of Dr. Headley’s research lies the question of how we can create a more effective and equitable criminal justice…

Greg Ridgeway is a Rebecca W. Bushnell Professor of Criminology, the department and undergraduate chair of Criminology, and a professor of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Ridgeway’s research involves the development of statistical, computational, and analytical methods to improve our understanding of crime and the functioning of the justice system….

John MacDonald is a professor of Criminology and Sociology and director of the Master of Science in Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor MacDonald studies crime and violence, race and ethnic disparities in criminal justice, and the impact of public policy on safety. A current focus of his work is examining how the science…

Joshua Hinkle, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. His research interests include evidence-based policing, crime and place, the disorder-crime nexus, and fear of crime. His work has been funded by the National Institute of Justice and the National Science Foundation and appears in journals…

Dr. Emily Owens is the Deans’ Professor of Criminology and Economics at the University of California, Irvine, and the Department Chair of Criminology, Law and Society. Dr. Owens is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine standing committee on law and justice, and she has been a member of ad-hoc committees…

Tal Jonathan-Zamir, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in 2024-2025, will be an exchange visitor–research scholar at the Department of Criminology, Law & Society, George Mason University. Her work focuses on policing, particularly police-community relations and evidence-based policing. She has investigated police…

Lorraine Mazerolle, Ph.D., is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (2010–2015) and a Professorial Research Fellow at The University of Queensland, School of Social Science. She received the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the General Division on Australia Day 2024 “for eminent service to education, to the social sciences as a criminologist…