William E. Spriggs, Ph.D., is Chair of the Department, and a professor of Economics at Howard University in Washington, DC. He also serves as Chair of the Independent Health Care Trust for UAW Retirees of Ford Motor Company, and is on the board of the Retiree Health Administration Corporation. Dr. Spriggs is also a Senior Fellow with the Community Service Society of New York, where he helps with Working for Change, a public policy forum held on Capitol Hill on the problems of young low-income workers and their families.
He serves as Vice Chair of the Board of the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute. As a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Dr. Spriggs currently serves on the joint National Academy of Sciences and NAPA Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States: Analysis and Policy Options.
Before going to Howard, Dr. Spriggs was a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. From 1988 to 2004, he served as Executive Director of the National Urban League’s Institute for Opportunity and Equality, where among other duties he was editor of the State of Black America 1999, and led research on pay equity that won the 2001 National Urban League Winn Newman Award from the National Committee on Pay Equity. He also represented the NUL on various boards including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Black Leadership Forum, and the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation.
Dr. Spriggs held various government leadership positions during the Clinton Administration including heading the National Commission for Employment Policy, crafting the guidelines for the federal Small Disadvantage Business program at the Department of Commerce, senior economist for the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and he worked on the passage of the increase in the minimum wage and to prevent legislative efforts to roll back affirmative action in federal procurement.
Currently, Dr. Spriggs serves on the policy board of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and is a Board member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2006, and serves on the boards of the National Employment Law Project, the National Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, and the National Advisory Council of Corporate Voices for Working Families.
He has presented at conferences in Brazil, Chile, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland. Dr. Spriggs has published in both academic and popular journals, and appeared on various television and radio news programs.
Dr. Spriggs has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellow) and a B.A. from Williams College (cum laude).
