I am an Associate Professor of Social Policy at Tufts University. I study how institutions define social problems and develop policies to address urban poverty and inequality. My research investigates the social and spatial consequences of housing policies for low-income households. In addition, I study barriers to educational attainment, especially for lower income students, and ways to overcome those barriers.
 
At Tufts, I am a faculty member in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and a faculty affiliate with Tisch College, the Data Intensive Studies Center (DISC), and the Equity Research Group. For the 2015-2016 academic year, I was a Neubauer Faculty Fellow. I am also an Associate Director of the MIT Resilient Cities Housing Initiative (RCHI) and a research affiliate at the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities (NIMC).
 
My professional experience on housing issues spans the neighborhood, city, and federal levels. I have built affordable housing with community development corporations, managed programs at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and analyzed policy at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
 
Previously, I was a National Poverty Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE). I received a Ph.D. in Urban Policy and Planning from MIT, M. Arch. from Yale, and Sc.B. in Neuroscience from Brown.