Roseanna Ander

Roseanna Ander, MPH, is the founding Executive Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab.  The University of Chicago Crime Lab and Urban Education Lab each works to help develop, implement and evaluate promising social policy interventions in a way that generates objective outcome data about what works and why. It is based in part on the success of MIT’s “Poverty Action Lab” which has quickly become a world leader in applying similarly rigorous research methods to understanding how to address poverty and other social problems in the developing world. In January 2010, Ander was appointed to the International Association of Chiefs of Police Research Advisory Committee and to the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission. In March 2011, she was named co-chair of Chicago Mayor-Elect Rahm Emanuel’s Public Safety Transition Committee.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Ander oversaw the Joyce Foundation’s Gun Violence program, which makes annual grants of $3.3 million to support research and public policies aimed at reducing deaths and injuries from firearms. She also served as the developer and lead program officer for the Foundation’s grant-making on Early Childhood Education. Prior to joining Joyce, Ander was a Soros Justice Fellow with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office where she worked on issues such as truancy, domestic violence and consumer protection. Ander has also worked for the Harvard Injury Control Center, the Harvard Center for Children’s Health, and the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.