Peter Nickerson is a professional economist and the principal of Nickerson & Associates. He has provided consulting expertise to business, legal and government entities since 1978. In that capacity, Peter has provided economic and statistical analyses, damage assessments, settlement administration and settlement analyses for arbitration and mediation.

Peter has been qualified as an economics and statistics expert in federal and state courts throughout the West. He was a tenured professor in the Albers School of Business at Seattle University where he taught graduate and undergraduate economics courses for over thirteen years. Between 1995 and 2002 Nickerson was President and CEO of a publicly traded Internet services company.

Peter Malishka has been providing expert economic consulting since 1999. He has particular expertise in damages and liability assessment in wage and hour class actions and frequently provides expert support in mediations in Washington and California. He has extensive knowledge of FLSA damages computation as well as state specific regulations in Washington, Oregon and California. Other areas of expertise include statistical analyses of discrimination, statistical evaluation of class suitability, and complex damages modeling.

Peter’s consulting work involves a broad range of industries, including retail, transportation, and pharmaceuticals. He is familiar with most commonly used payroll and personnel data systems and frequently manages the construction of complex databases that span multiple, disparate data sources including hardcopy documents requiring large scale, manual coding.

Peter earned a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) from Claremont McKenna College in 1994 and a Masters in Applied Economics from Montana State University in 1999. He was a graduate fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) where he conducted statistical research on the effects of policy changes on the values of public-private leasing arrangements. Peter is occasionally involved in public policy analyses sponsored by the Northwest Economics Seminar. Most recently he testified before the Washington State Legislature on the fiscal implications of extending public works bonds to 50 years.

Melissa manages large payroll and time keeping data sets used in economic loss calculations for a variety of employment disputes and class actions. In addition, Melissa provides analysis to aid counsel in mediation and settlement strategies. She has experience analyzing data and maintaining data sets for complex antitrust litigation as well as economic loss estimates for individual personal injury and wrongful termination matters.

Melissa joined Nickerson & Associates in 2001 after working in various capacities in the grain purchasing department of a flour mill. She received her bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Business with an emphasis in Economics from Montana State University.

Ashley joined Nickerson & Associates in 2006 with experience in the banking, retail, and marketing industry. Since joining the company, she has contributed to cases involving employment, competitive behavior, and settlement administration disputes and applies her programming knowledge to extract data from large data systems for statistical support in legal disagreements.

In her current role, she provides public policy research and reports on topics relating to resource economics, politics, and transportation. Her work combines research, programming, writing, and web development to promote a better understanding of local issues through a quantitative lens.

Prior to joining Nickerson & Associates, Ashley was a web promoter at an online ticket sales corporation and worked within the operational security department of a bank. She holds a B.A. in business administration from Seattle University with an emphasis in business economics, finance and international business.

Dr. Sykes joined Nickerson and Associates in 2008 as a research associate. Prior to joining the firm, he worked for the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) in Operations Research conducting statistical analyses and audit studies. Dr. Sykes has also performed statistical (regression, sampling, etc.) and demographic research for Fortune 500 companies involved in all aspects of litigation as a research associate for the National Economic Research Associates (NERA). Further, he has spent the last six years writing statistical programs for new statistical methodologies under the direction of Dr. Leo Goodman in Statistics and Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley. He has also conducted statistical analyses for The Pew Charitable Trusts on the labor market and demographic impacts of incarceration.

Dr. Sykes has a joint Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of California-Berkeley, and he is a current National Science Foundation Fellow and Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Washington. His research has been presented at the Population Association of America (PAA) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings yearly since 2003. Dr. Sykes has published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and he has several articles currently under review. In 2005, he was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student (TA) Award for teaching graduate and undergraduate demographic methods (population statistics) from the Demography department at UC-Berkeley, and he currently teaches demographic methods, sociology, and statistics at the University of Washington. Dr. Sykes' research focuses on discrimination in labor and health markets, the effects of crime and incarceration on American demography, statistical and demographic methodology, and social inequality.

Amy Purdie joined Nickerson and Associates in 2010. She has experience performing liability and damage assessments in wage and hour class action cases, estimating damages for wrongful termination and personal injury claims and analyzing business losses in breach of contract instances. Amy is also sponsored by the Northwest Economics Policy Seminar to perform public policy analyses of ballot initiatives for the state of Washington.

Prior to her employment with Nickerson and Associates, Amy was CFO of a jointly-owned residential construction company for 6 years. She has also worked as a Risk Analyst for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC.

Amy earned a BA in Mathematics from Carleton College in 2002 and a Masters in Applied Economics from Montana State University in 2009. As a graduate fellow at the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC), Amy studied the market value of green home construction.

David joined Nickerson & Associates in 2010 as the firm’s controller. He assumes responsibility for the firm’s operational accounting and financial reporting functions, including, financial statement preparation, time and billing, client accounts receivable, and various tax reporting requirements.

He also assists in economic case analyses, primarily in the area of finance and accounting.

David has over 20 years of accounting and financial reporting experience and has worked as a controller and accounting manager at several Seattle law firms.