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Investing in women and girls through climate finance is the best investment we can make now to achieve a resilient future for everyone.

Pioneers of the research that established housing choice vouchers reflect on the program today and rental assistance for today’s housing affordability crisis.

Researcher and policy analyst Karin Martinson has extensive knowledge of workforce development and income security policies affecting low-income populations.  With more than 30 years of experience, her research focuses on identifying effective strategies to assist disadvantaged groups seeking to gain a foothold in the labor market. The groups include low-skilled adults, cash-assistance recipients, the long-term unemployed, and those with disabilities or substance use disorders. She oversees Abt’s large portfolio of work at the U.S. Department of Labor and has worked with a wide range of federal and state agencies and philanthropic organizations.  She has led numerous research and evaluation projects, primarily in workforce and income support arena, as a project director, principal investigator, task leader, and content expert. She co-authored more than 50 research reports and briefs and contributed to published volumes on workforce policy. 

Daniel Gubits conducts research in the areas of housing, homelessness, economic self-sufficiency and disability policy. Gubits’ expertise is in econometric modeling, data analysis, and random assignment program evaluation.Gubits serves as the director of analysis for the Family Options Study, conducted for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He is also leading the impact analysis work for the Social Security Administration’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) project. Both of these are random assignment impact evaluations.

Lawrence Buron is an applied economist specializing in housing policy and the impact of government programs on labor market and quality-of-life outcomes of individuals and communities. An experienced leader of large-scale research and evaluation projects, he has led evaluations of the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCV), HOPE VI, post-disaster housing options, and community redevelopment programs. He directs a random-assignment study of 36-month outcomes from 29 Health Profession Opportunity Grants and other innovative education and training programs to improve the career pathways and economic well-being of low-income, low-skilled workers.

Peter Levine is a multi-disciplinary economic growth and private-sector development specialist with more than 25 years of experience in program management, new business development, and communications for complex international programs. This includes extensive work in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Central/Eastern Europe and successful capture work for Abt Global in Africa. This portfolio of activities encompasses new business and technical/financial management of U.S.-government funded projects ranging from $5 million to $55 million. Committed to youth issues, he mentors students and young professionals and integrates them into programs.

Donna DeMarco has more than 30 years of experience successfully designing and managing research studies on a variety of federal, state, and local programs targeted to lower income individuals and families. She has experience with program evaluation and policy analysis in a wide variety of fields, including asset building, community and economic development, housing, family development, education, job training, and community services. She has expertise in the implementation of qualitative research and data collection for large-scale, multi-modal, experimental research projects.

Dr. Hannah Thomas, a sociologist and geographer, brings over 20 years of experience in qualitative and mixed methods research addressing housing and economic inequality. Her work has ranged across the fields of housing, guaranteed income, workforce development, the racial wealth gap, community development, mortgages, and asset building. Dr. Thomas has worked with a range of clients from federal agencies such as the departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Health and Human Services, to cities, states, and non-profits. She brings a participant and implementation orientation towards her research and helps produce methodological solutions in service of the end users of programs and policies.

For more than 20 years, Jeffrey Conrad Wuorinen has focused on bridging divides and convening partnerships to take on intractable social, economic, governance, and environmental problems. Through his work in 100 countries, he has helped to mobilize more than $8 billion in capital and capacity investment into economic, social, and environmental infrastructure across the global south.  Wuorinen has worked at the grassroots level with some of the world’s most underserved and overburdened communities and he has advised at the highest levels of governments and international organizations.