2026 Speakers
Hans Johnson
Senior Fellow, Public Policy Institute of California
Hans Johnson is a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center and a member of the PPIC Economic Policy Center. His research focuses on improving college access and completion. He frequently presents his work to policymakers and higher education officials, and he serves as a technical advisor to many organizations seeking to improve college graduation rates, address workforce needs, and engage in long-term capacity planning. His other areas of expertise include international and domestic migration, housing in California, and population projections. Previously, he served as research director at PPIC. Before joining PPIC, he worked as a demographer at the California Research Bureau and at the California Department of Finance. He holds a PhD in demography and a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Irina Raicu
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
Irina Raicu directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is a certified information privacy professional, and her work addresses a wide variety of topics—from online privacy to social media’s impact on society, from the digital divide to the ethics of encryption, and the many ethical issues associated with artificial intelligence. Raicu was a member of the Partnership on AI's first working group on Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI, and she served as a member of the initial cohort of the city of San Jose’s privacy advisory task force.
Ms. Raicu has authored and co-authored a variety of resources published by the Markkula Center, including the compendium “Ethics in Technology Practice,” and, together with other center staff, she has worked with multiple companies in the process of developing their responsible tech/responsible AI policies and processes.
Ms. Raicu's writing has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, U.S.A. Today, Forbes, MarketWatch, Slate, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Recode. She tweets at @IEthics and is the primary contributor to the blog Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley.
As a teenager, Ms. Raicu came to the U.S. with her family as a refugee; her background informs her interest in the Internet as a tool whose use has profound ethical implications worldwide. She holds a J.D. degree from Santa Clara University’s School of Law, as well as a bachelor's degree in English from U.C. Berkeley and a master's degree in English and American Literature from San José State University.
John Ifcher
Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Curriculum at Santa Clara University; Research Fellow, IZA (Institute of Labor Economics); Fellow, GLO (Global Labor Organization)
John Ifcher teaches courses in microeconomics, behavioral economics, the economics of the public sector, and the economics of poverty and income inequality. His research focuses on decision making on behalf of others, subjective well-being, social welfare programs, and the impact of economics instruction. One recent paper investigates the impact of relative income on subjective well-being; another investigates competitive preferences and decision making on behalf of others. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review, Experimental Economics, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, the Journal of Economic Psychology, the Journal of Happiness Studies, the Journal of Health Economics, and Management Science. He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and the International Review of Economics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.P.A. from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and a B.S. in computer science and psychology from the University of Michigan.
