For Immediate Release: May 21, 2004

Baltimore, MD -- Monica Leal, an intern at Optimal Solutions Group over the past year, earned her Masters in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University. She joins Optimal full-time as a Research Analyst and brings strong qualitative skills (i.e., focus group research, survey design, and performance measurement) and subject matter expertise in welfare, housing, and education policy.

While in graduate school, Ms. Leal completed a number of Optimal projects. Most recently she quantified the return on investment of the Empower Baltimore Management Corporation's lead paint remediation initiative. Ms. Leal is also working on a number of marriage initiative evaluation projects (i.e., Supporting Healthy Marriages evaluation). 

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, is a minority-owned economic and policy analysis consulting firm in the Baltimore-Annapolis-Washington, DC area.  We are committed to supplying insightful program evaluation, cost-benefit and effectiveness analyses, custom econometric modeling, and market analyses for decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors.

OPTIMAL has served the needs of numerous governmental and commercial clients, including federal and state agencies, community-based organizations, business associations, and law firms.