Dina Israel

Israel is one of MDRC’s senior field liaisons and technical assistance team members, as well as a project director. For nearly two decades, she has worked side by side with program staff members across the human-services system: nonprofit organizations that serve families, government agencies providing public benefits, child support offices, public health offices, youth employment training programs, and programs that serve participants with health problems and other barriers to employment. While rigorous research is often what brings her together with practitioners, in practice her efforts help partners strengthen program implementation continuously. She helps them to reflect on the knowledge they gain from the work, use their data constructively, and listen to participant and staff voices. She is an affiliate of MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science and trained in human-centered design approaches. Israel has worked on several federally sponsored demonstrations of new programs and policies, as well as evaluations of existing services. She has a BA from Oberlin College and a master’s in public policy from the University of Chicago’s Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy.