2025 Annual Conference Speakers

Get Published: A Panel of Editors in Community & Family Sciences

Please attend the incredibly informative closing session featuring a panel of distinguished editors of journals in which you do or likely wish to publish. This session is for aspiring authors, but is also for highly experienced, published authors. Insights on getting published and updated on the incredibly and fast changing landscape of academic publishing. Hear what is working well, what has been creating challenges for editors and reviewers as they work diligently to move important research to become available. Oh and this closing session is not only informative but fun - with snacks, adult beverages and terrific door prizes. Please join the panel planning committee of (1) Sharon DeVaney, Professor Emeritus, Purdue University; (2) Nilton Porto, Moderator, Associate Professor, University of Rhode Island, and (3) Elizabeth Kiss, Moderator, Professor, Kansas State University to hear from:

Rui Yao, Editor
Journal of Consumer Affairs, American Council on Consumer Interests

Rui Yao’s research focuses on consumer and family financial decision-making and well-being. Specific topics include financial resilience, debt management, saving and investment behavior and motives, risk tolerance, financial capability, consumption patterns, employment-leisure decisions, as well as mental and physical health outcomes of financial events. Her interdisciplinary work targets at providing implications to stakeholders of consumer and family well-being and impacted millions of consumers and families through her publications, presentations, and media interviews. She received the best paper award from the CFP Board, AARP, American Council on Consumer Interests, and American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences.

Mari Borr, Editor
Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences

Mari Borr is an associate professor at North Dakota State University in family and consumer sciences teacher education.  She is originally from North Dakota, received her bachelor’s degree in home economics education and master’s degree in FCS education from NDSU, and her doctorate in teaching and learning-higher education from the University of North Dakota. She taught middle school and high school FCS classes for 14 years before starting her career with NDSU. Borr's research interests include incorporating math and science into FCS courses, the use of technology in teaching and online teaching and learning.

Jing Jian Xiao, Editor
Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, Association for Financial Counseling and Planning

Dr. Jing Jian Xiao is Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at University of Rhode Island, teaching courses and conducting research in consumer economics and personal finance. He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, associate editor for International Journal of Bank Marketing and International Journal of Consumer Studies, and editorial board members for several other journals in consumer finance. His research interests focus on how to help consumers increase financial literacy, perform desirable financial behaviors, and enhance financial capability to improve their financial and overall wellbeing. He has published many research papers in professional journals in consumer economics and related fields.

Dee Warmath, Editor
Journal of Family and Economic Issues

My research examines the ways in which a consumer’s approach to decision making promotes the well-being outcomes of those decisions. I focus on the roles of decision-making skill, self-efficacy, motivation, and the involvement of others in achieving well-being. I served for more than five years as the Principal Investigator for the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection on its project to define and measure financial well-being, as well as test hypotheses of its drivers. I was also a Principal Investigator in the NCAA / Department of Defense Mind Matters Challenge with a three-year project examining the role of design thinking and social marketing in encouraging concussion reporting among young adults.

 Colston E. Warne Lecture

Emily Gallagher
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder

Emily Gallagher is an assistant professor of finance in the real estate track of the Leeds School of Business. Recent papers in household finance examine the effect of changes in U.S. health policy on rent and mortgage delinquency rates, eviction/foreclosure costs, and household savings decisions. Her work often involves quasi-experimental designs, using large policy changes or natural disasters as tools to better understand the financial calculus of households. She has published papers in the Journal of Public Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Among other outlets, her research has been featured in MarketWatch, The Atlantic’s CityLab; AARP Magazine, Vox’s ‘The Weeds’ podcast, Bloomberg, CNBC, Business Insider, Vice, and National Public Radio. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the Paris School of Economics (Sorbonne) and completed her post-doctorate work at Washington University in St. Louis (Olin Business School). She is also a research fellow at the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and Philadelphia.

 

Esther Peterson Consumer Policy Forum Lecture

Devesh Raval
Deputy Director for Consumer Protection at Federal Trade Commission

Devesh Raval's research concerns industrial organization, with a focus in production technology, competition, and consumer protection. Since finishing his doctorate at the University of Chicago, he has published in several journals, including Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, Marketing Science, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, as well as receiving a patent for his work on econometrics. From 2021 to 2022, he was the Victor H. Kramer Foundation Fellow at Harvard Law School. Dr. Raval also has extensive experience in applying industrial organization methods to real world problems first as a founding member of the Economics Team at Amazon.com, and now at America's premier antitrust and consumer protection regulator. At the FTC, he was awarded the Francis Walker (Economist of the Year) Award in 2019 and the Outstanding Scholarship Award in 2020. Currently, he is the Deputy Director overseeing the FTC's consumer protection mission within the Bureau of Economics.