Bridgette Lery is a senior fellow in the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on child welfare and other human services, including administrative data systems, performance measurement, capacity building and evidence use in the workforce, program implementation, and evaluation. Her current work includes leading a mixed-methods study of the connection between economic hardship and child welfare system involvement in New York City, providing continuous quality improvement technical assistance to state and local child welfare agencies, and leading several program evaluations, including a maltreatment prevention program in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; California’s guaranteed income pilot; a family resource center intervention in San Francisco; and legislation to address the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Lery resides in San Francisco, where she previously worked in local government directing research and evaluation for the San Francisco Human Services Agency. She holds a BA in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz; an MSW from Columbia University; and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare.
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