STAFF

Patrick Button (he/they)
Executive Director

Patrick Button is the inaugural Executive Director of the Data Hub: Tulane Center for Data Literacy. Button served on the committee that helped establish the idea of the Data Hub, serving as chair of a subcommittee that focused on how the Data Hub can engage and support undergraduate students. Button has always been very interested in teaching data literacy and data analysis, by, for example, teaching data analysis in his courses on Labor Economics, Economics of Discrimination, and Econometrics.

Button is also an Associate Professor of Economics whose research focuses on discrimination, particularly in the areas of age and disability, but also including sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity. Their research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, the Sloan Foundation, the Social Security Administration, the Haynes Foundation, and the Borchard Center for Law and Aging, among others. Button is currently researching sexual orientation and race discrimination in access to mortgage loans, and gender identity, race, ethnicity, and health insurance status discrimination in access to mental health care appointments. See Button’s personal website: patrickbutton.com, for more information about their research.

Button received their Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, with honors, from the University of Regina before receiving their Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Toronto and their Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Irvine.

In their role as executive director of the Data Hub, Button looks forward to meaningfully advancing Tulane’s equity, diversity and inclusion efforts by ensuring that the university’s efforts to improve data literacy and data education are inclusive of underrepresented groups, broadly defined. These include racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people, women, those in less data-intensive fields and non-traditional students. Button is also dedicated to supporting the data leaders – faculty and students – on campus as they continue to push Tulane’s research and education on data analysis and management forward. Thus, Button seeks to increase data literacy, analysis, and management both to those who have little and lots of exposure to data. Button also looks forward to continuing Tulane’s tradition of integrating research and education with the community.