The Manhattan Institute Welcomes Christos Makridis and John Ketcham as New Scholars

NEW YORK, NY – The Manhattan Institute is pleased to welcome two new scholars, Christos Makridis and John Ketcham, to its diverse team of policy experts.

Makridis, a new adjunct fellow with the Institute, serves as a research professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business and research affiliate at the Global Security Initiative, both at Arizona State University. He is also a non-resident digital fellow at the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford University, a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Religious Studies at Baylor University, a senior advisor at Gallup, and a non-resident research scientist at Datacamp. In his free time, he serves on the council of advisers for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and also as chief technology officer at Living Opera, an arts and education technology startup.

Makridis joins the Institute having previously served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where he managed cybersecurity, technology, and space activities as a non-resident fellow at the Cyber Security Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, as a digital fellow at the Initiative at the Digital Economy within the MIT Sloan School of Management, and as a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Previous to these engagements, Makridis earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at Arizona State University, as well as a dual masters and Ph.D. in Economics and Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University.

Makridis’ primary academic research focuses on labor economics, the digital economy, and personal finance and well-being. His piece in City Journal today, coauthored with Gil Alterovitz, director of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, offers a timely reflection on solutions for enhancing veterans’ employment and labor prospects.

Ketcham joins the Institute as a fellow, focusing primarily on legal policy and state and local issues. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2021 and earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Fordham University, having graduated as valedictorian.

While in law school, Ketcham served as treasurer of the Harvard Federalist Society and managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Before joining the Institute as a collegiate fellow in 2020, he spent a summer at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. Born and raised in Astoria, Ketcham currently sits on the board of directors of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy in Queens.

Ketcham writes frequently for an array of publications. His most recent article, published in the New York Daily News, explores the diverging criminal-justice outlooks of Mayor-elect Eric Adams and incoming District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He’s previously written on a variety of topics from the Supreme Court’s usage of shadow dockets to the cultural and zoning implications of multigenerational housing.

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