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Ann M. Aviles, PhD
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Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Delaware
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Dr. Aviles is a community-based, applied social science researcher with a specific focus on the developmental trajectories, academic and life skills, of youth of color experiencing homelessness/housing instability. While her work primarily addresses youth homelessness, it also emphasizes an analysis of institutional structures and practices that contribute to and maintain inequitable conditions of poverty frequently resulting in poor educational/health outcomes for this often-overlooked youth population. Dr. Aviles’ work underscores equity and access for all marginalized populations, including Black and Latinx individuals, women, individuals experiencing poverty and homelessness, and individuals grappling with mental illness, violence and trauma.
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| Samantha Batko |
Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute |
Batko's areas of expertise are homelessness, housing instability, housing assistance, and supportive services. Her current projects include the evaluations of Tipping Point Community's Chronic Homelessness Initiative in San Francisco, HUD-DOJ Pay for Success permanent supportive housing demonstration, and New Jersey's Keeping Families Together program for permanent supportive housing for child-welfare involved as well as a national landscape assessment of youth housing programs. Before joining Urban, Batko spent 12 years at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, where she developed expertise in homelessness and housing policy, research, and technical assistance. |
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| Elizabeth Bowen, PhD |
Assistant Professor, Social Work, University of Buffalo |
Dr. Bowen's research addresses the links between homelessness, health, and well-being, for groups including young adults, cross-systems youth, and formerly homeless individuals living in permanent supportive housing. Dr. Bowen also conducts policy research and co-developed a framework for trauma-informed social policy analysis. Dr. Bowen received her PhD from the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago and previously worked as a manager of harm reduction-based supportive housing programs in Chicago. |
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| Daniel Castellanos, DrPH |
Director of Research & Innovation, Latino Commission on AIDS |
In a previous role at the Hispanic AIDS Forum, Dr. Castellanos oversaw HIV prevention and supportive programs, including staff supervision, program development, grant management, and fiscal oversight for programs at the Hispanic AIDS Forum and Queens Pride House. At The Partnership for the Homeless, Dr. Castellanos oversaw efforts to enhance the effectiveness of services for homeless families and individuals, including implementation of needs assessments and development of evidence-based service models. |
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| Rashida Crutchfield, PhD |
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Cal State Long Beach |
Dr. Rashida Crutchfield is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach. She is an advocate committed to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities through research and service. Prior to her work at CSULB, she served on the staff of Covenant House California, a shelter for 18-to-24-year-olds experiencing homelessness. This experience gave her insight into practice for this population. Her areas of practice and research focus on student homelessness in higher education, basic need security for students, and social work community practice. Dr. Crutchfield was commissioned to lead the phase one of the California State University Office of the Chancellor study on food and housing security and was co-principal investigator for phases two and three of the same study.
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| Dennis P. Culhane, PhD |
Professor of Social Policy; Co-PI, Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), University of Pennsylvania |
Dr. Culhane is a social science researcher with primary expertise in the area of homelessness and assisted housing policy. His work has contributed to efforts to address the housing and support needs of people experiencing housing emergencies and long-term homelessness. Most recently, Culhane’s research has focused on using linked administrative data to gain a better understanding about the service utilization patterns of vulnerable populations, including youth exiting foster care and/or juvenile justice, as well as the individuals aged 55 and older who are experiencing homelessness. From July 2009 – June 2018 he served as Director of Research at the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
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| Josephine Ensign, DrPH |
Professor;
Director, Homelessness Research Initiative’s Doorway Project, University of Washington |
Dr. Ensign is professor of nursing and adjunct professor in the School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle where she teaches health policy, health politics, and health humanities. Her scholarship focuses on health and social inequities for people marginalized by poverty and homelessness. She is the author of numerous academic and narrative medicine journal articles, as well as the 2016 narrative policy book Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net and the 2018 health humanities book Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins. |
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| Judith G. Gonyea, PhD |
Professor, Social Research; Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Boston U |
Dr. Gonyea is the author of more 100 publications, often centering on historically disadvantaged older populations with the goal of advancing equity. In her work, she uses an intersectionality lens to explore how individuals’ multiple identities (e.g., gender, age, race) intertwine to shape their aging experience. One strand of Gonyea’s research focuses on elder care, especially the gendered nature of caregiving and how culture shapes health behaviors. Gonyea is a fellow and past elected chair of the Social Research, Policy and Practice Section of Gerontological Society of America and an elected member in the National Academy of Social Insurance and the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. |
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| Margot Kushel, PhD |
Professor of Medicine;
Director UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, UC San Francisco |
Dr. Kushel's research focuses on reducing the burden of homelessness on health through examining efforts to prevent and end homelessness and mitigating the effects of housing instability on health care outcomes. She has a particular interest in homelessness in older adults and homelessness in medically complicated individuals. She is the PI of an NIA funded R01 that developed the HOPE HOME (Health Outcomes in Populations Experiencing Homelessness in Older Middle agE) cohort, an ongoing longitudinal cohort study examining the causes and effects of homelessness on adults aged 50 and over in Oakland, CA. |
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| Michael Lens, PhD |
Associate Faculty Director, Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies; Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Public Policy, UC Los Angeles |
Dr. Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Dr. Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate. Dr. Lens’s research has received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, among other sources. |
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| Norweeta Milburn, PhD |
Director of Research and Evaluation, Nathanson Family Resilience Research Center, UC Los Angeles |
Dr. Milburn has been a principal investigator for National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research on homeless adults and youth, and African American youth. She has examined paths into and out of homelessness, as well as the risk for HIV among homeless youth in the U.S. and Australia. She has designed and implemented a behavioral intervention for homeless adolescents at risk for HIV and their families, and she also has designed and tested recruitment strategies for behavioral substance abuse interventions. Dr. Milburn is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA). She has been a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and recently chaired the APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s Contribution to End Homelessness.
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| Matthew Mitchell |
Senior Analytics Consultant, Focus Strategies |
Matt Mitchell is a senior analytics consultant with Focus Strategies. He leads analytics projects for communities using data driven strategies in their work to reduce homelessness. He conducts system evaluations and supports communities translate findings into actionable system improvement and policy change and development. Matt centers equity in his work through rigorous measurement and analysis and by incorporating the voices of stakeholders and service recipients. Before joining Focus Strategies in 2021, Matt worked in affordable housing and homeless healthcare for twelve years. He served in a variety of roles including street and hospital outreach, case management, quality improvement, data strategy, and analytics. His interests include population segmentation, strategic planning, system design, and data-driven decision making. Matt holds a master’s degree in religion, ethics, and politics from Harvard University. |
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| Deborah Padgett, PhD |
Professor, Social Work and Global Health, New York University |
Dr. Padgett is known for her expertise in qualitative/mixed methods and is the author of two textbooks in this area. She is an expert on the ‘housing first’ approach to ending homelessness and is first author of a book on housing
first published by Oxford University Press (2016). She has published extensively on homelessness and mental health services research in journal articles. Dr. Padgett received two all-qualitative R01 grants from the National Institute of Mental Health from 2004 to 2016, both of which examined mental health and substance abuse recovery among formerly homeless
persons living in supportive housing. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and former President of the Society for Social Work and Research. |
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| Gary Painter, PhD |
Professor;
Director, Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and Homelessness Policy Research Institute, University of Southern California |
Dr. Painter is a Professor in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California and serves as the Director of the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. Professor Painter is a leading figure in the field of social innovation, working extensively with a variety of social innovation organizations and collective impact networks to address some of the grand challenges that society faces. His current research focuses on how to activate the social innovation process.
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| Anna Plumb |
Evaluation and Research Manager, Multnomah County Budget Office |
Plumb leads an evaluation and research team performing program evaluation and research in the areas of employee experience, workforce equity, and program effectiveness for an organization of over 5,500 employees. Plumb's role also includes consulting countywide on evaluation and research practice, and she serves as an evaluation partner to the Multnomah County Joint Office of Homeless Services, including co-chairing the A Home for Everyone Coordinating Board’s Data, Outcomes, and Evaluation subcommittee. In this role she authored a unique analysis of spending on services for people experiencing homelessness in the Portland Metro region, examining four fiscal years of spending data from multiple jurisdictions. Plumb also sits on the board of JOIN: Connecting the Street to a Home. |
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| Maria Elena Ruiz, PhD |
Associate Director, Chicano Studies Research Center; Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing, UC Los Angeles |
Dr. Ruiz has over 25 years’ experience as a teacher, clinician, and researcher. Her research and teaching integrates a multidisciplinary approach, interweaving nursing, medicine, language/culture, and the behavioral sciences. She is a nationally and internationally recognized Latina nurse leader and has received several awards for her Spanish language/Latino culture programs, research on aging minorities, clinical work in high risk communities, as well as advocacy and mentoring of underrepresented students. Dr. Ruiz’s research includes studies on diabetes among Latinos, older Black and Latino men living with HIV/AIDS, and empowering nurse case managers in interdisciplinary teams in Latino communities.
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| Beth Shinn, PhD |
Professor, Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University |
Dr. Shinn is a Cornelius Vanderbilt professor at Vanderbilt University. She studies how to prevent and end homelessness and create opportunities for groups that face social exclusion. Her book with Jill Khadduri, In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to do About it, argues that research shows how to end homelessness, if we devote the resources to do so. |
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| Julian M. Somers |
Professor, Simon Fraser University |
Dr. Julian Somers has led large scale studies addressing homelessness, mental illness, addiction, crime and community safety. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and works to promote change with people who experience homelessness and those in positions of influence. Dr. Somers’ clinical specialty is addiction, trained by Drs. G Alan Marlatt and Bruce Alexander. |
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| Sharon Egretta Sutton, PhD |
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Parsons School of Design, The New School |
Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is an activist educator and public scholar who promotes inclusivity in the cultural makeup of the city-making professions and in the populations they serve, and also advocates for participatory planning and design processes in disenfranchised communities. Dr. Sutton, who previously practiced architecture in New York City, was the twelfth African American woman to be licensed to practice architecture, the first to be promoted to full professor of architecture, the second to be elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the first to be president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board.
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| Jack Tsai, PhD |
Staff Psychologist, VA;
Director, National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, Department of Veterans Affairs |
Dr. Tsai has been affiliated with the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans since its creation in 2009 when he was the Center’s first fellow. He has held several research and administrative roles in the VA, and has over a decade of clinical experience providing direct patient care to veterans. He is currently based at VA Connecticut and serves on the faculty at Yale School of Medicine where he is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Mental Health Services Research. Dr. Tsai has published extensively on housing and healthcare services for homeless veterans. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, and is Associate Editor for Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
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| Jacob Wagner, PhD |
Associate Professor, Director of Urban Studies Co-Founder, Center for Neighborhoods, University of Missouri Kansas City |
Dr. Wagner's expertise lies in the fields of community development, planning and urban history, and historic preservation. His area of specialty includes the city of New Orleans where he lived and worked for 5 years. His research addresses the role of the historic urban built environment in the politics of race and collective memory. Prior to his work at UMKC, Dr. Wagner taught courses in community development at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and courses in planning history and urban studies in the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans. He has also worked in planning and community development in Oregon. He is currently a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Urban Design.
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