Reimagining Pensions

Olivia S. Mitchell is International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance/Risk Management, Professor of Business Economics/Public Policy, Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, and Director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at the Wharton School. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co-Investigator for the Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan. Her main areas of research and teaching are pensions, insurance and risk management, public finance, and labor markets, with an international focus. She received her B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


Richard C. Shea is chair of Covington & Burling LLP's Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice, where he is widely regarded as a leading authority on cash balance, pension equity, and other complex benefit plan designs. Previously, he served as Associate Benefits Tax Counsel at the Treasury Department, where, together with his colleagues at the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, he was responsible for developing federal tax legislation and regulations governing employee benefits and executive compensation. He received his AB from Amherst College and his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.