The Alliance for Lifetime Income, a nonprofit consumer education organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., has appointed Jason Fichtner to head its Retirement Income Institute as senior fellow, according to a news release.

Fichtner succeeds Seth Harris, who has joined the Joe Biden administration as deputy assistant for labor and economy.

Fichtner, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, played a leading role in the founding of the Retirement Income Institute, as well as its efforts to bring together scholarly research and private sector solutions for greater retirement security in America, the news release said.

In its first year, the institute reportedly published 24 insight papers and gathered more than 200 leading experts, academics and industry executives for conversations on retirement and aging at the alliance’s inaugural series of dialogues.

Jean Statler, CEO of the Alliance for Lifetime Income, said in the news release that Fichtner’s work with the organization had been invaluable to its mission of educating Americans about the importance of protected income in retirement.

“His research on issues related to Social Security, annuities, retirement security and related policy ideas, along with his scholarly contributions to the Retirement Income Institute, make him the logical leader for the institute,” she said. “We’re privileged to have him lending his expertise to our strategy and operations.”

Fichtner joined the John Hopkins University faculty in 2011 as an adjunct professor. Previously, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In addition to his academic work, Fichtner has held public leadership positions with the U.S. Social Security Administration and the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. 

Fichtner earned his B.A. degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, his master’s in public policy from Georgetown University and his PhD in public administration and policy from Virginia Tech.

Established in 2018, the Alliance for Lifetime Income was formed to educate Americans about the risk of outliving their retirement income.