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Rachel Black is an Associate Director at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program (FSP), leading research for FSP’s Benefits 21 initiative and directing the development and implementation of Person-Centered Policy and Program Design methods across the FSP team. Previously, Rachel was a Research Fellow with the Jain Family Institute, serving as Project Manager for the City of Newark’s Guaranteed Income Task Force and lead author of the task force’s final report, Building Financial Security: Newark’s Roadmap to a Guaranteed Income. Prior to that, she spent nearly 10 years at the think tank New America providing policy research, analysis, and commentary on ways to reform public systems, especially the social safety-net and tax code, to improve the financial security of U.S. households, including as the Director of New America’s Family-Centered Policy program, which advocated a strategy for designing more equitable and inclusive social policies by centering the communities who would be directly impacted. Previously, Rachel was a policy analyst in the Government Relations department of the national grassroots anti-hunger organization Bread for the World, where she helped shape the organization’s domestic policy agenda and contributed to its legislative advocacy, including leading its 2008 campaign to enhance the anti-poverty impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

Rachel holds a BS from Georgia Tech. Her work has been featured in a diverse set of outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Business Insider, CNN, and Essence.