About

The Urban Institute’s Equity Scholars Program empowered scholars to deepen their research on race, equity, and systemic disparities. These scholars collaborated with our Office of Race and Equity Research to produce and support research across Urban’s policy centers and with our Racial Equity Analytics Lab.

From 2022 to 2024, scholars analyzed the effects of social structures on people and places, offered evidence-based solutions, and shared their insights with decisionmakers.  

Approach

The Equity Scholars Program selected eight leaders in their fields to foster innovative solutions across a variety of policy areas. The program operated from 2022 to 2024. Two key elements drove this program: 

1. Interdisciplinary scholars: Equity Scholars came from and collaborated across sociology, economics, public health, and other disciplines to enhance their research. 
2. Actionable solutions: The scholars focused on actionable knowledge, investigating the impact of structural racism and sharing evidence-based solutions with decisionmakers to drive societal change.

Meet the Scholars

INTRODUCING THE 2022–24 EQUITY SCHOLARS

Shauna M. Cooper, an associate professor and director of diversity initiatives in the department of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, researches the cultural and contextual factors shaping positive youth development, focusing on African American adolescents and families. Her work spans parental involvement, ethnic-racial socialization, gender-related processes, and youth community involvement, and her findings are published in numerous scientific journals. Committed to translating research, she develops culturally specific, family-focused prevention programming. Her service leadership reflects her dedication to equity and promoting positive development among racial and ethnic minority children and families.

Dawn Dow, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the faculty director of the Critical Race Initiative, hosting the Parren J. Mitchell Symposium to study systemic inequality. She is also a faculty associate at the Maryland Population Research Center. Dow’s qualitative research delves into intersections of race, class, and gender within family, educational settings, the workplace, the law, and political mobilization contexts. Her work explores how these intersections complicate debates about the influence of economic and cultural resources on the experiences and life trajectories of the growing African American middle and upper-middle class.

John M. Eason is an associate professor in sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. His mixed-methods research specializes in ethnography, rare events, rural and urban communities, punishment, and race. Eason founded and directs what is now called Justice Labs of America and is a founding member of the UW pancreas cancer data group. Before graduate school, he was a church-based community organizer focused on housing and criminal justice issues and served as a political organizer for former Illinois state senator Barack Obama. The National Science Foundation funds his work on COVID-19 in prisons.

Karishma Furtado is a senior research associate in the Office of Race and Equity Research at the Urban Institute. Previously, she was staff to the Ferguson Commission and founding staff of Forward Through Ferguson, where she led the use human-centered data, research, and reporting to catalyze structural change for racial equity. With a doctoral degree in public health sciences, Furtado’s research and scholarly efforts take a participatory and mixed-methods approach to measuring and modeling structural racism in and across systems, especially health care and education, and building researcher capacity to do equity-oriented work. Furtado is particularly interested in the intersections of data and story and research and strategy. She is also a senior research scholar and a faculty affiliate at Washington University in St. Louis and a board member of InvestSTL.

Luisa Godinez-Puig holds a master’s degree in arts and science from Boston University, an LLM from the University of Chicago, and a law degree (JD equivalent) from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She also completed her PhD in political science at Boston University in 2022. Her research focuses on instances of local power restriction or empowerment, with a specific focus on the role of race and ethnicity.

Diana Guelespe is a senior research associate in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She has a doctorate and more than 20 years of experience working with immigrant and refugee communities. She employs community-based participatory research and intersectionality to address inequities and enhance marginalized groups’ wellbeing. Collaborating with community partners, she researches health, homelessness, education, and immigration. Her qualitative study on mixed-status families’ driving challenges influenced policy changes in Illinois and Washington, DC, improving immigrant access to driver’s licenses. Previously, at the University of Maryland, she oversaw research on underrepresented minorities in the academic pipeline, implementing programs to support their academic progression.

Michael Neal, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, directed economics in Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research division and held an assistant vice president role at the National Association of Home Builder’s Economic and Housing Policy department. As a housing economist, Neal provides expert insights into housing market trends and media commentary nationwide. His extensive experience spans roles at Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reverse System, the Congressional Budget Office, and Goldman Sachs. Neal holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Morehouse College and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Brian Smedley is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, where he conducts research and policy analysis to address structural and institutional forms of racism that affect the health and well-being of people of color. Previously, Smedley was chief of psychology in the public interest at the American Psychological Association (APA), where he led the APA’s efforts in applying psychology to address human welfare and social justice issues. He co-founded and served as executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity, connecting research, policy analysis, communications, and on-the-ground activism to advance health equity. He also codirected the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders national program center. Smedley’s prior role was vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, an organization focused on addressing the needs of communities of color.