Carolyn J. Hill Joins MDRC as a Senior Fellow

Carolyn J. Hill, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, has joined MDRC as a Senior Fellow for a one-year appointment. At MDRC, Hill is working on implementation research strategies and innovations, including methods for linking program features with impacts. She is working on these issues across policy areas, as well as on specific projects, such as the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation.

"We are really pleased to have a scholar of Carolyn’s stature join MDRC,” said MDRC President Gordon Berlin. “Her unique understanding of the intersection between public systems and program interventions and of the cutting-edge analytic methods required to assess their effectiveness will prove invaluable to our work.”

Hill’s research is driven by questions of whether and why public programs are effective, and how they can be improved. She has pursued these questions through three main research initiatives: developing an overarching framework for accumulating empirical evidence about public management and program effectiveness; conducting empirical analyses of specific aspects of public programs and management in areas of education, health, and human services; and analyzing methods and measurement issues that arise in the evaluation of public programs and management.

Hill has coauthored a number of important methodological papers with MDRC experts. Her work has been published in multiple journals, and she is the co-author of three books: Public Management: Thinking and Acting in Three Dimensions, 2nd Edition (with Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., CQ Press, forthcoming 2015); Against the Tide: Household Structure, Opportunities, and Outcomes among White and Minority Youth (with Harry J. Holzer and Henry Chen, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2009); and Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research (with Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., and Carolyn J. Heinrich, Georgetown Press, 2001). Hill received a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago in 2001.