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Meryl Finkel leads Abt Global’s Housing and Communities Practice, overseeing large-scale housing; community and economic development; and social policy data collection, analysis and technical assistance projects. Clients include the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Corporation for National and Community Service, as well as foundations and state and local governments.

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.

Since 2011, Dr. Anna Jefferson has spent her career in policy research creatively and rigorously applying ethnographic, participatory, and community-based methods to make policy research more person-centered. She is a subject matter expert in guaranteed income, inequality, consumer finance, and U.S. housing policy, and a fluent Spanish speaker. She co-leads Abt’s portfolio of guaranteed income evaluations and has worked extensively with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Housing and Urban Development, New York City Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, and a range of philanthropic clients. Dr. Jefferson is an experienced principal investigator, project director and task leader, and co-leads Abt's qualitative and mixed methods affinity group. 

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.

Lori Hunter is a Project Management Professional and a Certified Scrum Master with 20 years of experience working in systems analysis, functional requirements analysis, user-centered design and user experience, database administration and design, and web design and development. Her projects and experience represent a range of complexities, including administrative and evaluation data collection and reporting systems analysis and visualization, clearinghouses, websites, technical assistance tracking, evaluation data collection, interactive online tools and libraries, communities of practice, and Section 508 compliance. She has been the lead project manager for several large CMMI-3 IT implementations. Her responsibilities have included directing project team personnel; managing scope, schedule, budget, and risk; ensuring contract compliance; and serving as the interface with the customer and customer stakeholders.