Alec Levenson is a Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton University. He has held previous appointments at Milken Institute and Princeton University. Dr. Levenson's research focuses on the economics of human resources and organization design; HR and human capital metrics, analytics, and return on investment; and strategy.

Topics include estimating the strategic and financial impact of HR and human capital; identifying attraction, retention, motivation and productivity drivers for key talent pools; building analytic capabilities within the HR function; measuring the economic value of human capital gained on the job; aligning competency systems with strategic and bottom-line objectives; measuring and maximizing the economic value of leadership development, including executive coaching; measuring the return on investment to globally distributed software development; how companies manage for success in times of adversity; and contingent work.

He works with companies to improve the quality of human capital analytics and increase the efficacy of HR programs and practices, including Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Capital One, Cisco Systems, Frito-Lay, Motorola, Pfizer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Royal Bank of Canada, Sun Microsystems, and Nestle. He has also received research grants from the Sloan Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute for Literacy.