Dara Lewis
Dara Lewis
Senior Research Associate
Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment

Lewis is a senior associate in the Youth Development, Criminal Justice, and Employment policy area and co-leads MDRC’s Equity Collaborative. She is also the implementation lead on the federally funded Testing Identified Elements for Success in Fatherhood Programs (Fatherhood TIES) study, identifying and testing components of fatherhood programs believed to lead to improved outcomes for fathers. As an Equity Collaborative co-lead, Lewis assists with applying culturally responsive and equitable practices across MDRC’s research and technical assistance projects. She also helps lead MDRC’s Implementation Research Group, which supports implementation methods across projects and policy areas. Before joining MDRC in 2022, Lewis was a research professor at Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Urban Research and Learning and worked as a practitioner and researcher with unhoused people and fathers who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. Lewis holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University Chicago. 

Products

Brief

Identifying Core Components in Fatherhood Programs Through a Multimethod Analysis Approach