John M. Agosta, Ph.D., is a Vice President at the Human Services Research Institute and has worked with people with disabilities for over 30 years. Dr. Agosta completed his doctorate in Rehabilitation Research at the University of Oregon, specializing in research methods and community supports for people with disabilities. Additionally, he has extensive experience with community supports, having worked in direct services and administrative positions within agencies offering early intervention, residential, vocational, or family support services.

Dr. Bershadsky is the primary statistician and data analyst on several projects at HSRI. She works on the National Core Indicators (NCI) project, an effort to develop indicators and benchmarks of performance across 30 states developmental disabilities service systems. She also works on Sage Resources, an effort to use assessment to develop the best match of waiver dollars to the support needs of participants. She holds a BA in Statistics and a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Fortune is primarily responsible for managing and working on projects related to assessment informed resource allocation. Dr. Fortune also works to provide technical assistance to state leadership regarding system redesign and Medicaid services for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In 1990, Dr. Fortune joined the Wyoming Department of Health Developmental Disabilities Division where he held senior management positions. He was instrumental in designing and implementing Wyoming’s system of community services for persons with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injury, including developing Medicaid HCBS waivers for both populations. Dr. Fortune also was the chief architect of the precedent- setting Wyoming DOORS model through which people with disabilities are assigned individual budgets based on their assessed needs and other factors. He has published extensively and made numerous presentations at national conferences concerning individual budgeting and community services.

Ms. Melda has been employed with HSRI since 1992, and her primary responsibilities include project leadership, policy and statistical analyses, program evaluation, and provision of training and technical assistance. Specifically, her work focuses on projects related to family support policy and practice, person-centered funding, performance gap analyses, and studies assessing the impact of change on service recipients. Ms. Melda currently serves as Director of HSRI's Juntos Podemos (Together We Can) Family Center, connecting Latino families who have children with disabilities to community services and supports. She oversees the family support related activities of the National Core Indicators project, which analyzes family support satisfaction data across 30 states. She recently completed a study of the impact of service reductions on Florida's service population, and has worked on reimbursement projects in Colorado, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Ms. Melda holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Administration (University of Oregon) and a Bachelor's Degree in Special Education (Indiana University).

Mr. Smith works on several projects related to developing person-centered funding strategies, assessing the impacts of service changes and reductions, and supporting self-advocacy.  While at HSRI, Mr. Smith has worked on resource allocation projects in Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Rhode Island, North Dakota and Virginia, as well as strategic planning projects in Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and North Carolina.  Mr. Smith currently also works with the University of Minnesota on the Residential Information Systems Project (RISP). He is a graduate of Portland State University in Business Administration.

Ms. Teninty's work focuses on a variety of HSRI priorities including system re-design, resource allocation, self-directed services, family support, and quality improvement. She works with others at HSRI to generate policy solutions to promote community integration and self-direction. Ms. Teninty served for four years as the Director of the Illinois Division of Developmental Disabilities within the Department of Human Services. In that position she was responsible for all aspects of the state service delivery system that served 30,000 children and adults with developmental disabilities and had an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. Most notably, she managed to make progress in Illinois to promote community centered responses to the needs of people with developmental disabilities, even in times of significant budget stress. Previously, she served as the Chief of Staff for the Indiana Division of Disability and Rehabilitative Services, and has held a number of other management positions requiring expertise pertaining to state systems and Medicaid financing. Ms. Teninty earned a Masters in Public Affairs from Indiana University in Bloomington in 2000.