Nari Rhee

Dr. Nari Rhee has served as Director of the Retirement Security Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center since 2014. Before her current role, she served as Manager of Research at the National Institute on Retirement Security from 2011 to 2014. Dr. Rhee conducts evidence-based policy research at the intersection of aging, the U.S. retirement system, and economic challenges facing low-income and middle-income workers, including retirement benefit design, pension reform, retirement wealth inequality, long-term care, and older workers. She also provides technical assistance to labor and community organizations on retirement benefits for marginalized workers. Dr. Rhee’s research has helped shape the national conversation on the retirement crisis and the race and gender gaps in retirement wealth, and contributed to the establishment of CalSavers, a state-sponsored automatic retirement savings plan for private sector workers.

Dr. Rhee was appointed by the California Senate to the CalSavers Retirement Savings Board in July 2025 and has been a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2014. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley (2007), an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA (1998), and a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Santa Cruz (1996).