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Sarah Gillespie
Associate Vice President, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy
Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center
After working in both the nonprofit and public sectors, I saw that access to evidence of what works and how to implement it is one of the biggest challenges in community development and neighborhood revitalization. Through Urban’s work, we provide and translate that evidence for both practitioners and policymakers tackling some of the biggest challenges facing communities today.

Sarah Gillespie is associate vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on housing and homelessness, place-based initiatives, and performance measurement. She is project director for a five-site experimental evaluation of supportive housing for families involved in the child welfare system, and an experimental evaluation of a supportive housing pay for success initiative for frequent users of the criminal justice system in Denver. She also leads technical assistance efforts on data collection and performance measurement for federal Promise Neighborhood place-based grantees as well as Feeding America's Collaborating for Clients collective impact pilot sites. Before joining Urban, Gillespie was a program manager at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she developed and managed public-private partnerships to support departmental priorities.

Research Areas
Children and youth
Tags
Neighborhoods and youth development
Kids in context
Evidence-based policy capacity