Darrene Hackler

Darrene L. Hackler was a Senior Fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). She is the author of Cities in the Technology Economy (ME Sharpe 2006), which examines the effects of technology industries and infrastructures on cities and the local policy actions required for effective responses to these challenges.

Prior to joining ITIF, Dr. Hackler was an associate professor at George Mason University in the Department of Public and International Affairs where her research focused on the political economy of innovation, entrepreneurship, the technology industry, and telecommunications infrastructure. She had grants and contracts from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to examine entrepreneurship, women's business ownership, and innovation, and from the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government to examine how federal, state, and local policy can utilize stimulus funds and take actions to go beyond recovery. She completed work for the CGI Initiative on current local economic development practices, for a coalition of state and local associations to analyze future transportation policy alternatives, and for the Small Business Administration that examined the connection between human capital and women's business ownership. She was also part of the research team that designed an Information and Communication Technology Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for Orange County, California, under a grant from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.

She has work published in Public Administration Review, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Journal of Urban Technology, Canadian Journal of Regional Science, American Behavioral Scientist, Annals of Cases on Information Technology, Innovation Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy, and Cities in the Telecommunications Age: The Fracturing of Geographies.

Before joining George Mason University, she was an analyst for a telecommunications industry analysis firm, RHK (OVUM), a senior research associate with Claremont Information Technology Institute, and an independent telecommunications consultant to executive real estate developers of commercial real estate, resort communities and master-planned communities.

Dr. Hackler received her Ph.D. in political science and economics and M.A. in public policy from Claremont Graduate University in California, and a B.A. in political science and economics from the College of Idaho.