Kimberlyn Leary, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute, is a senior adviser at New America and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she codirects executive education programs through the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative for new mayors, senior leadership teams, municipal procurement officials, and community development finance executives. She will join the Harvard Kennedy School faculty in July 2025, where she will direct the Equity Innovation Hub at the Bloomberg Center for Cities. She is formerly Urban’s executive vice president and senior vice president for research management and program development.

Leary advised the White House under President Obama and President Biden. She was an adviser to the Obama White House Council on Women and Girls and a senior policy adviser to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. During the Biden-Harris transition, Leary was a part-time volunteer member on the agency review team for that office. At the Biden White House, on Intergovernment Personnel Act assignment from Urban, she was the first senior equity fellow at the Office of Management and Budget and senior adviser to the Domestic Policy Council.

Leary writes and consults on government innovation, adaptive leadership, collaboration, and equity and has an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. In 2024, she was a Rockefeller Bellagio Resident and previously was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow.