Kenneth Shiffman has been a member of Kensington Research Institute’s Board of Directors since the company’s inception in 1993. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Washington University in 1984 and a Master of Arts degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1989. He works in Atlanta, Georgia as a producer for the Cable News Network’s documentary production unit, CNN Presents where he has worked since 2000. During this time, he has developed programs such as Sixteen Acres (2002–about the different ideas being considered for how to use the land previously occupied by the World Trade Center buildings), Fat Chance (2002–pertaining to obesity and explaining how people who have lost weight and kept off the weight have been able to do so), and America Remembers (2002–interviews with the journalists who covered the events of 9/11 and how covering 9/11 affected them personally).

Trained as an investigative reporter, Mr. Shiffman previously worked in CNN’s investigative divisions CNN and Time from 1992-2000 and CNN Special Assignment from 1989-1992. During those years, he produced stories on a wide array of topics. Included among these were: Off Track (2000–about what happens to greyhound racing dogs when they are retired from competition), No Safe Haven (2000–regarding exposure to lead paint poisoning among children in public housing due to inadequate governmental inspections), Broken Levees, Broken Lives (1998–pertaining to how aging levees in the United States pose dangers to local citizens, especially in areas experiencing significant growth and sprawl), Dead Wrong (1997–about a Florida law preventing certain people from suing physicians for malpractice even when their loved ones had died), Discount Blues (1995–pertaining to insurance companies hiding discounts they receive and failing to pass the lowered costs on to their customers), and FOIA: The Waiting Game (1992–investigating the Freedom of Information Act and why people may experience lengthy delays in receiving requested information and documents).

Over the years, Mr. Shiffman has won numerous awards for his programs. In 2002, he received the CINE Golden Eagle as well as a National Headliner Award for his documentary, Investigating Terror, which covered the events of 9/11. In 1997, he won an Emmy Award for his work covering the Olympic Park bombing incident during the 1996 Olympics. His documentary series entitled Democracy in America (which focused on campaign issues among candidates in the 1996 presidential election) won several awards, including the prestigious Joan Shorenstein Barone Award, the National Headliner Award, and the Chicago International Film Festival Certificate of Merit. Mr. Shiffman also received recognition for his program Padding the Bills (which dealt with fraud in the medical insurance industry), including a 1996 CINE Golden Eagle and a bronze award from the Worldfest-Houston Film Festival. Two of his programs–Pillars of Our Prosperity (1993–which explained how socioeconomic issues affected the 1992 presidential election) and Race and the Gulf War (1992–demonstrating the impact of racial minority group members on the fighting forces in the Gulf War) have been awarded Unity Awards for excellence in covering minority problems, issues, and concerns.

Kenneth Ossman has been a member of Kensington Research Institute’s Board of Directors since 2002, when one of the original members, Dr. David Pittman, passed away. Mr. Ossman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Bloomsburg University in 1985 and has been a Certified Public Accountant since 1995. In 2002, he also earned the title of Certified Credit Reform Accountant. Mr. Ossman is a senior accountant at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he has worked since 1999 in the Farm Service Agency’s Financial Management Division. Prior to joining the USDA, Mr. Ossman was a senior accountant at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. There, he worked in the Single Family Insurance Claims Branch from 1986-1996 and in the Office of Housing for the Comptroller of the Federal Housing Administration from 1996-1999.

Throughout the course of his career, Kenneth Ossman has received numerous awards for his work. In 2000, for example, he was acknowledged with a Certificate of Merit by the USDA for exemplary performance on the preparation of the agency’s annual financial audit. That same year, he also received a Certificate of Merit for helping to improve the accounting processes used by the USDA’s Financial Management Division. In 2001, Mr. Ossman received another Certificate of Merit for developing a system to streamline the financial statement preparation process, as well as an Outstanding Performance Award for his work on the year-end financial audit. In January 2003, he was awarded two more Certificates of Merit by the USDA, one for outstanding performance in the quality and timeliness of his accounting work, and the other for assisting in the implementation of a new approach to calculating subsidy reestimates.

Jamie Feldman has been a member of KRI’s board of directors since the company’s inception in 1993. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and anthropology at Washington University in 1984 and her Master of Arts degree in anthropology at the University of Illinois–Urbana in 1992. In 1993, she was awarded both a Ph.D. in anthropology and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois–Urbana. She completed her medical residency in family practice at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL in 1996. Currently, Dr. Feldman is a physician and assistant professor in the Department of Family Practice and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, where she has also been a member of the faculty in the Program in Human Sexuality since 1998.

Dr. Feldman’s professional activities and accomplishments demonstrate a diversity of experiences in the disciplines of family practice medicine, HIV/AIDS, ethnographic and qualitative research, human sexuality, and transgender medicine. Since 1999, she has been a consultant for the Ryan White Title III Advisory Council of the Rural AIDS Action Network. For the past few years, she has been the chairperson for the Transgender Medicine Research Committee of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, as well as the moderator of the Transmedicine Discussion Group, an internet/email discussion group for health professionals and physicians wishing to discuss various aspects of transgender medicine. Dr. Feldman is an active member of several national professional associations, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the American Medical Women’s Association, the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group, the American Anthropological Association, and the Society for Medical Anthropology.

She has been honored by being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (national collegiate honorary society) in 1984 and Alpha Omega Alpha (national honorary society in medicine) in 1990, and received the Resident Teacher Award from Lutheran General Hospital in 1996. In recent years, Dr. Feldman has been the Principal Investigator on a research grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to develop and study an HIV curriculum for medical residents specializing in family practice, and the Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to compare French and American models of HIV/AIDS.

David Pittman was one of the original members of the Board of Directors at Kensington Research Institute, where he served from 1993 until 2001, when illness forced him to step down from his duties. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1949 and his Master of Arts degree in sociology in 1950, both from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. In 1956, he was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Human Development from the University of Chicago. Dr. Pittman spent most of his professional career as a professor of sociology at Washington University, where he worked from 1958 until his retirement in 1993.

Over the course of his long, distinguished career, Dr. Pittman was the author of more than 200 articles, monographs, book chapters, and books, along with innumerable presentations at professional conferences throughout the United States and abroad. Considered by many of his colleagues to be one of the "founding fathers" of the alcohol studies field, Dr. Pittman wrote seminal works such as Revolving Door: A Study of the Chronic Police Case Inebriate (1958), which utilized the notion of the disease concept of alcoholism to demonstrate how alcoholics needed treatment rather than adjudication through the criminal justice system, Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns (1962), considered by many scholars to be the preeminent sociological, sociocultural, and anthropological text on alcohol use, Alcoholism (1967), which furthered his writings about cultural, legalistic, and sociological vantage points regarding drinking problems, and Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined (1991), in which he and many of his alcohol studies colleagues updated his classic work on the interplay of sociological factors and alcohol use behaviors.

Dr. Pittman was the recipient of many accolades, all of which he received humbly and with considerable modesty. He was listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and American Men and Women of Science. He was the recipient of the 1967 Page One Civic Award for helping to found the first detoxification and diagnostic evaluation center for alcoholism in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Dr. Pittman received the 1974 and 1975 Volunteer Service Award from the National Council on Alcoholism as well as that organization’s Bronze Key Award (for outstanding contributions in the field of alcoholism) in 1976 and its Silver Key Award (for career contributions to the field of alcoholism) in 1978. In 1989, Dr. Pittman was awarded the Director’s Award for Distinguished Service by the Missouri Department of Mental Health. He also received the 1993 Senior Scholar Award from the Drinking and Drugs Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems for his career achievements in the substance abuse field.

In every way, David Pittman was an accomplished scholar, a valued mentor, a supportive colleague, and a dear friend. We at KRI miss David’s guidance and scholarship, and most of all, his warmth and friendship.