Lynette Rawlings, PhD

Founder, President, and CEO

Dr. Rawlings is the founder and CEO of The Policy Academies, a US based research training, leadership development, network building, and grantmaking organization. The Policy Academies (TPA) shapes a fair, just, and fully inclusive future by cultivating a new generation of highly trained, principled, and service-driven policy leaders from excluded and underserved communities. These leaders will develop and advance systems-level solutions to the most pressing and intractable social and economic justice challenges of our times. TPA works to transform the public policy field by equipping these emerging leaders with the skills, knowledge, and networks to prepare them for careers that will expand economic opportunity and mobility throughout the nation. We are also building an ecosystem of changemakers to support these leaders. Together, this multigenerational community will strengthen and protect our multiracial democracy and the integrity of its institutions -- essential foundations for the implementation of sound policies that advance the public good and create a future of shared prosperity for all.

From 2007 through 2012, during her tenure as senior researcher at the Urban Institute, Dr. Rawlings conceived, designed, and led the Academy for Public Policy Analysis and Research– the pilot program that serves as the underpinnings of The Policy Academies. In addition to leading The Policy Academies, Dr. Rawlings is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and serves on the Board of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and the Festival of the Diaspora. She was previously a Non-Resident Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution. She has also contributed to policy research and initiatives for the German Marshall Fund of the US, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the European Foundation Center. Dr. Rawlings began her career at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as a Program Associate with the Income Security Division. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from George Washington University in Washington, DC.