Reflections on Life as a Scholar at Duke Sanford
Lisa A. Gennetian
September 21, 2026
The following reflections grew out of remarks I gave to the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy Board of Visitors in 2024. They capture why I chose to join Sanford, what motivates my research, and what a typical week looks like as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and engaged public citizen.
Thank you for the invitation and privilege of being with you this evening. I joined the Duke Sanford School in 2020. If I could share a word cloud to express my experience so far, the words with the largest fonts would include exhilarating, impactful, humbling, exhausting, intellectually stimulating, rewarding, and generative.
Duke Sanford lives and breathes as a lever of social change.
This evening I look forward to sharing:
Who I am and how I landed at Duke Sanford
Two of my big research endeavors
My typical week, as it conveys how I, and we at Duke Sanford, engage as scholar citizens, with students, with the public, and with policymakers
Who I am:
I’m a professor of public policy. I’m an applied economist. My transition to Duke as a fully tenured professor is nonconventional; I came to Duke after many years of a robust career in other types of research firms and adventures.
I am a first-generation college graduate. One of the top few formative experiences for me as a teenager was being advised by my high school guidance counselor, who encouraged me to go to a safety school because I was not likely, in his words, to be more than a wife or secretary.
I also am only two generations away from orphans of the Armenian genocide. One of those orphans ended up being a single mother, raising her three children in public housing in western Massachusetts, and making ends meet as a factory worker at Spalding. She was my maternal grandmother and she died prematurely from liver cancer due to inhaling chemicals.
I’m a scholar, teacher, and mentor focused on poverty and children and resources.
You might wonder why I made the pivot to full-time academia at a time in my career when maybe I could have slowed down. The answer for me is simple. I wanted to be in a place where I can transmit, mentor, and teach and invest in the next generation of scholars and leaders. Doing this at scale is only possible in higher education. So, here I am.
My research:
My first stint post-PhD was during a pivotal point in U.S. social policy in the late 1990s, when the original 1960s War on Poverty programs were reimagined in dramatic ways. First there was devolution, moving authority from federal policy makers to state and local governments, and this coincided with a series of conditions for individuals to receive benefits, hinging eligibility criteria on employment and thus closely linking people’s well-being to a labor market that was also undergoing volatility. These steps echo some deep themes in U.S. social policy when it comes to thinking about children: i.e., a belief and economic system stating that the responsibility of raising children must be in the hands of families, and in its extreme not in the hands of government.
From this, in the 1990s era arose another set of really significant policies that remain strong today, including the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, expansions of SNAP/WIC (food assistance), and ongoing investments in early intervention and prevention programs like Head Start and home visiting.
What does this mean for child poverty in the U.S.? Child poverty responds to the state of the broader economy and government investments; and, indeed reductions in child poverty follow patterns consistent with a strong economy and expanded social policy investments. Nevertheless, child poverty is higher in the U.S. than in high-income nation peers. There are many complicated reasons for this. One of those is the ways in which the U.S. economic safety net for children hinges on formal work (and documentation). And, how the labor market has evolved, not in tandem with a child care infrastructure, but with the unraveling of public goods investments and the caregiving economy, thus opening and enhancing fissures of systemic inequality. And this has all happened while the knowledge and science of child development simultaneously increased revealing the importance of investments in children. Some policy choices seemingly collide with scientific innovation in understanding children’s development.
All of these shifts have shaped two areas of my own research:
The role of resources in children’s lives. How does higher income, via direct income support, given this labor market and policy context, affect children’s early development, including brain development? The infants in the multi-site longitudinal randomized controlled study called Baby’s First Years that I’m conducting with colleagues in pediatrics, neuroscience, social work, education, psychology, human development, and related fields are now five years old, and some of their families have received $313 in unconditional cash per month since the time they were born in 2018–19. We are not only learning about the impact of this cash but also generating a rich portfolio of longitudinal data of a racially and ethnically diverse group of families. The effects of autonomy, self-determination, and stress are all part of what we are learning in an evidence-based way, through this randomized controlled trial in the middle of a groundswell of basic income initiatives in the U.S.
Improved understanding of Latino children and their families. Four million of the 9 million children residing in poverty in the U.S. in 2022 are Latino, of mixed heritage and nativity status. Nearly all Latino children are born in the U.S., yet one out of four are raised in families with at least one adult who does not have citizenship or formal authorization to be in the U.S. Adult employment is high. Latino children residing in poverty are more likely than peers to be residing with two parents. Receipt of social benefits is low. This is the fastest growing, youngest population in the U.S. We need to care.
And these, in turn, reflect themes of my intellectual approach, with the strengths and limitations of economic tools grounding a broad multi- and interdisciplinary perspective—an approach that is not only feasible but emblematic as a hallmark of possibilities at Duke University.
Let me end by saying a little about a typical week featuring highlights related to teaching and mentoring, and public engagement and service.
A typical week this past month:
I am teaching a lecture for 74 undergraduate public policy majors, a core required course on microeconomic tools. Most of the students have never been exposed to economics. Many enter this course with fear, and anxiety, and annoyance—it is because of economics, after all, that our world is so unequal, that profit has prevailed over well-being; and, further, it involves math! This is my fifth year teaching this course. I’ve learned to lean in. I’ve learned that teaching economics in a way that is connected to daily life is really powerful. So, we kick off the class with opportunity costs and sunk costs. At the beginning of each class, I ask students to share their “econ naturalist” observations—anything they’ve noticed about economics in real life. Students come with stories about how their decision to go an event that they did not want to attend because they bought the ticket months ago makes no sense; there is a lot of conversation about the structure of food points in Duke University’s meal plans; there are insights about how and why the fast-fashion market works.
I also teach an upper-level undergraduate course on empirical methods. This course is designed to expose students to the various dimensions of applied empirical research (from what is an outcome worthy of empirical examination to what is correlation to deciphering how much one can generalize findings), to engage with social science in informed ways, and I’ve built in a practical component of actually working with data and programming in statistical software. It’s not unusual for a student to arrive on a Wednesday and say, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I have no data observations!” Together, we work through the software glitches and find meaning in the data.
This teaching is closely interwoven with mentoring and faculty advising of scholars at various levels including undergraduates, master’s, PhDs, and postdoctorates. Last week I had dinner with five PhD students; we enjoyed a meal and discussed two recently published studies. Undergraduates ask me about career advice or how to learn more about social policy or how to get involved with a research project. Master’s students have capstone projects (I’m advising one student who is studying female employment in India and another examining cash transfers in Armenia). I chair PhD admissions, and PhD students come in hailing from different disciplines but have in common a commitment to addressing social problems. There is vertical glue at Sanford across all these layers of scholars. One way that I create the glue is by hosting summer “book clubs.” Typically the nominated books are nonfiction, ethnographic/story-based approaches.
That’s just the teaching/mentoring part of my typical week. There’s more!
Last week I finished up a commentary on poverty among Hispanic children, and it was posted at a communication hub called EconoFact, aimed at dissemination of economic facts to broad lay audiences.
Last week I also gave a 20-minute presentation to a National Academy of Sciences committee on the topic of social and economic policy and behavioral health. I was lucky to get the support of Center for Child and Family Policy experts to help pull together my presentation and the IT staff to ensure my technology is set.
I also learned that my nomination to serve on another National Academy of Sciences committee was approved.
I also submitted a proposal for a mentoring grant for a postdoctorate scholar last week and wrote three reference letters for students’ jobs or next academic steps.
Like every week, I had multiple meetings with several large multi-institutional research teams.
And, yet, there’s still more!
Over the last weeks we, as senior faculty, have also been busy in the business of supporting and shaping the future of our school. This means hosting guest scholars/speakers, serving on hiring and promotion and related committees, and, showing up for faculty meetings.
I’d be remiss if I did not mention yet another part of my Duke Sanford experience, and this is enjoying everything that happens at Duke. For me, that includes women’s basketball games.
So, for this scholar who decided to take the plunge mid-career rather than wind down, there is no regret. I’m proud to be here, and I’m thankful to be part of Duke Sanford as a lever for social impact.