Darrene L. Hackler, Ph.D.

Darrene Hackler is an advisor to Smart Incentives and Business Development Advisors. Located in Sacramento, CA, she focuses on incentive policy and use on the west coast. Darrene was the former executive director of research development within the Office of Research at the University of California Davis. She previously served as vice president for research and programs at the International Economic Development Council and was a Senior Fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Darrene’s research focuses on strategic economic development initiatives and programs in areas of innovation; entrepreneurship; broadband; and high-tech, green-tech and clean-tech industries. Her work provides communities with policy guidance and assessment tools to increase their competitiveness through the development of these strategic assets. In addition, she provides assistance to communities seeking to integrate sustainability policy and indicators with economic development goals and objectives.

She is the author of Cities in the Technology Economy (ME Sharpe 2006) and multiple peer-reviewed journal articles.

Darrene 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.

Ellen D. Harpel, Ph.D.

Ellen Harpel is the founder of Smart Incentives and president of Business Development Advisors LLC (BDA), an economic development and market intelligence consulting firm.

Ellen has helped many communities evaluate the competitiveness of their incentives offerings. Using the Smart Incentives 4 x 4 framework, she continues to work with economic development organizations to implement policies that enable them to achieve their development goals while making smart fiscal and economic decisions.

Recent projects include competitive analyses of state and local incentive policies, implementation of ROI and other program metrics, data management and reporting for evaluations, and assessments of incentive management processes. Ellen speaks and writes frequently on incentive policies and programs for national audiences comprising economic developers, elected officials and finance professionals.

Ellen is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness and an affiliate with the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. She is an active member of the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), International Economic Development Council (IEDC), Council of Development Finance Agencies (CDFA), and Virginia Economic Developers Association.

She received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, an MBA from the University of North Carolina, and her Ph.D. in regional economics from George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.