Pamela Loprest is a labor economist and Senior Fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute. For the last two decades, her research has focused on low-wage labor markets and barriers to work among disadvantaged populations and policies to address these issues. Dr. Loprest is currently leading Urban Institute’s work evaluating the Health Professions Opportunity Grants (HPOG) demonstration which is providing training in a career pathway model to TANF recipients and other low-income individuals. She is co-directing work for the JP Morgan Chase Foundation assessing their New Skills at Work initiative. She is also leading the evaluation of the Work Support Strategies initiative, an effort by six states to improve integration and access to public work support systems including Medicaid, SNAP, and child care. Her prior research includes directing the Unemployment in Recovery project, studying the impacts of the recession on workers and labor markets. Dr. Loprest is a nationally known expert in welfare policy and research. She is the co-author, with Gregory Acs, of the book Leaving Welfare: Employment and Well-Being of Families that Left Welfare in the Post-Entitlement Era and the author of numerous other research articles. Dr. Loprest received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.