Elsa Falkenburger is a senior fellow in the Center on Equity and Community Impact and is director of the Community Engagement Resource Center at the Urban Institute. She provides technical assistance and trainings, develops practical guides for implementing community engaged methods focused on equity, and consults on how institutions can systematize participatory methods. She has led various initiatives and provided strategic advising for local and federal government, research institutions, philanthropy, and community-based organizations focused on engaging with community members as co-experts, partners, and decisionmakers.

Before joining Urban, Falkenburger worked at the Washington Office on Latin America, focused on best practices for addressing youth gangs in Central America and ending the US embargo on Cuba. During graduate school, she worked at the KDK-Harman Foundation, helping grantees develop logic models and designing a common application to reduce grantee burden. Falkenburger has a BA in economics from Boston College and an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.