My research interests are primarily related to how people live, work, and behave within an urban context and how their circumstances affect their decisionmaking and life trajectories.
Leslie Mullins is a research associate in the Executive Office of Research at the Urban Institute.
Before joining Urban, Mullins was a policy analyst and doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. Mullins examined the social and health determinants of homeless youth and performed extensive qualitative coding of program barriers and mitigation strategies of youth-oriented service implementation programs. For her doctoral dissertation work, Mullins developed and used a streamlined parsing and coding method to quantitatively analyze client language during a group-level motivational interviewing intervention that focused on substance use and HIV risk of homeless youth.
Mullins is also an experienced affordable housing specialist with over 10 years of experience in community, housing, and economic development. Most notably, Mullins created and implemented the City of Oakland’s Preservation and Rehabilitation of Existing Affordable Rental Housing Funding Program and managed the development of multifamily affordable housing rental units throughout Northern California.
Mullins received her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, her master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her doctoral degree in policy analysis from Pardee RAND Graduate School. Mullins completed her postdoctoral studies at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research and Office of Native American Programs.