Marsha R. B. Schachtel
Senior Fellow

Policy analysis is inherently an optimistic, forward-looking endeavor, which I find most compelling. Through the application of our reason, knowledge, and experience we can understand how things work, figure out how to intervene to improve them, learn from our mistakes, and ultimately, make a difference. My career has been spent at the intersections of the many forces affecting our metropolitan areas: private investment, government interventions, citizen action and non-profit advocacy, university discovery, and analysis. I started at the "urban action arm of the business community," seeking to improve community and economic development, education, and juvenile justice in Baltimore through public policy advocacy. Later, I helped shape and operate government interventions in private investment decisions in order to enhance the economic vitality of cities and states. Today, much of my work focuses on ways that university-generated technologies can be exploited to benefit the local economy.

Marsha Schachtel has served as Executive Assistant to Governor William Donald Schaefer and Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Assistant Director and Business Development Manager of the Greater Baltimore Committee, and Director of Technology Development at the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. She has also been Deputy Director of the National Association of State Development Agencies and Education Manager of the National Council for Urban Economic Development, and continues to play a leadership role in national science and technology issues for the Science and Technology Council of the States. She holds a B.A. in urban studies from Brown University and an M.S. in urban planning from Johns Hopkins.