Jamila Michener is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University, New York. She is a leading expert in the study of poverty, racial inequality, politics and public policy in the United States. Her work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. She is a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Inequality, a graduate field faculty member in the Africana Studies Department, a faculty affiliate in the American Studies Program, and an affiliate at the Cornell Population Center. As a publicly engaged scholar, Michener is also co-leader of the Finger Lakes Branch of the Scholars Strategy Network, sits on the advisory board of the Cornell Prison Education Program, and teaches regularly in local prisons. Prior to coming to Cornell, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and completed a postdoctoral fellowship as a Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan.