Board Members

Richard W. Roper
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

Richard W. Roper, founder and president of the Roper Group, a public policy consulting firm specializing in economic and social policy research and evaluation, has had a 30-year career in public affairs.  He has held senior levels positions in local, state, regional, and federal government agencies and has experience in nonprofit organizations and academic research, teaching, and administration.

Prior to establishing The Roper Group in 1996, Roper served as an executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. For three-and-a-half years, he was director of the agency’s Office of Economic and Policy Analysis, supervising a staff of 70 economists, statisticians, demographers, and business and public policy analysts.  He also served a brief period as director of the Office of Business and Job Opportunity, assisting women, minorities, and small businesses gain access to Port Authority contracts and services.

Roper’s Port Authority experience occurred following a 12-year association with Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. At the university, he served as assistant dean for Graduate Career Services and Governmental Relations, director of the Program for New Jersey Affairs, executive director of the Council on New Jersey Affairs, and lecturer in Public and International Affairs.

Prior to his Princeton University experience, Roper served as director of the Office of State and Local Government Assistance and as special assistant for Intergovernmental Relations in the Office of the Secretary, U. S. Department of Commerce; director of the Office of Newark Metropolitan Studies in Newark, NJ; and legislative aide to the Mayor of the City of Newark.

Roper serves on the board of directors of 15 organizations including the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, the Institute for Social Justice, New Jersey Policy Perspectives, La Casa de Don Pedro, and the American Forest Foundation.  He is also a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, the Advisory Council for Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and is a Visiting Associate at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

The Roper Group includes among its clients the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York (SUNY), the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation, Lucent Technology Foundation, Seedco, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Council for Higher Education in Newark (CHEN), the Camden Higher Education and Health Care Institutions Coalition, Newark in the Twenty-First Century Task Force  and a wide range of community-based non-profit organizations, among them: Newark Public Radio, Inc. (WBGO-FM), Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, New Jersey Community Capital, The Paterson Alliance, Camden Empowerment Zone Corporation, the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, and the Boston TenPoint Coalition.

Roper is the author of numerous articles and reports on social, economic, political, and government operations issues.  He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey and a Master in Public Affairs degree from Princeton University.

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