Lee Evans
Lee D. Evans is a policy coordinator in the Research to Action Lab at the Urban Institute, where he provides administrative and technical assistance for several cross-sector projects. Before joining Urban, Lee worked as an analyst for Mindset Global, an education start-up, and interned at the Children’s Defense Fund in the child poverty department. He is passionate about equipping legislators with the tools they need to implement robust and effective programs, particularly programs that lift people out of poverty and ensure children are able to live happy, healthy, and safe lives. Lee attended Duke University and holds a bachelor’s degree in public policy with a certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Presentations from Facing Race 2024
Which Equity Tools and Resources Are a Good Fit for Your Community?
Local government staff actively seek resources to help advance their internal and external racial equity efforts, such as resources on conducting equity-related assessments, engaging and empowering community members, and equitably allocating resources, among others. To meet this need, the Urban Institute’s Office of Race and Equity Research (ORER) launched the Equity Resource Navigator: an open-access, user-centric tool for local government officials to find resources to help them embed equity into different areas of their work. Ongoing discussions with our GARE colleagues have also informed the development of a Racial Equity Continuum that grounds this work in several stages and focus areas for practitioners to contextualize where they are along their racial equity journeys, as well as to help them define resources and supports needed to advance. In this interactive workshop, ORER will introduce the Navigator and connect local practitioners and other stakeholders to a wide range of resources meant to facilitate and advance racial equity efforts. We will first contextualize this work using insights and stories we have heard from localities that drove the need for the Navigator. Then, we’ll demo the Navigator and introduce some use cases for resources in the Navigator before moving to small groups to discuss potential applications of tools in practitioners’ daily work, as well as to have a broader discussion on equity work at the local level, gaps and opportunities in the field, and ways in which Urban can support this work. This session is for local practitioners and other organizations seeking resources to support their teams as they conduct racial equity work. We hope this workshop further contextualizes participants’ understandings of their community’s racial equity work and presents useful and actionable resources that practitioners can take away and share with their teams.
Speakers: Celina Barrios-Millner, Olivia Soledad, Karolina Ramos, Lee Evans, Chitra Balakrishnan