Lauren Farrell is the deputy director of the Community Engagement Resource Center and a policy associate in the Race and Equity​ Division at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on community engagement and participatory methods. She works with young people, community leaders, and people at the intersections of racism, sexism, and ableism to ask what research can do for them. She holds herself accountable to the people who are most affected by research and believes expertise comes from lived experience.

Before joining Urban, Farrell worked with incarcerated people in California and Texas through the Innocence Network. She received her bachelor’s degree in public policy from the Gerald R. Ford School at the University of Michigan.