Bill Pitkin is a senior policy fellow in the Research to Action Lab and the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. He leads work on housing justice and racial equity, upward mobility, and affordable housing.

Pitkin has worked at the intersection of research, policy, and social change for nearly three decades in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and academic sectors. Pitkin has advised leading foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategy and catalyzing social equity through investments in collaborative leadership and systems change, and he recently served as Professor of Practice at Pardee RAND Graduate School. He spent more than a decade at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, where he developed and directed US programs. Among his accomplishments at Hilton, he helped establish models such as the Home for Good Funders Collaborative, Los Angeles County’s pay for success initiative, and the Los Angeles County Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool.

Pitkin served on the Funders Together to End Homelessness board of directors from 2008 to 2021 (and was chair from 2015 to 2018) and is a fellow at Frameworks Institute. He holds an MA and PhD in urban planning from University of California, Los Angeles.