Nandita Verma, a senior fellow, brings nearly three decades of experience designing and leading large-scale, visible social policy evaluations. She has served as principal investigator, project director, or project manager for major multisite studies of housing and economic mobility programs, with a portfolio spanning national and local policy reform and self‑sufficiency initiatives. Along with colleagues at MDRC, she is leading a policy design and evaluation effort focused on direct rental assistance, an alternative rent policy for households receiving federal housing vouchers. She is also leading efforts to understand the implementation and effects of innovative housing mobility programs, including Anthos|Home in New York City, the Supporting Moves to Opportunity demonstration in St. Louis and Milwaukee, and the long-term follow-up of the Creating Moves to Opportunity Demonstration in Seattle and King County, Washington.
She serves as co‑principal investigator on HUD’s Stepped and Tiered Rent Demonstration and previously served as the project director of the multisite Rent Reform Demonstration, and her earlier work includes rigorous evaluations of HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency and Jobs Plus programs. Her research also spans major community revitalization initiatives, such as the MacArthur Foundation’s New Communities Program, the Ford Foundation–supported redevelopment initiative in Camden, New Jersey, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–funded evaluation of the national Purpose Built Communities model. Verma maintains an active publications record with numerous reports on efforts to advance the economic mobility and well‑being of housing‑assisted residents, and she holds a Ph.D. in social work from Case Western Reserve University.