Dr. Lauren Ferreira Cardoso is the Managing Director of Capacity Building at the HAVI, a fiscally-sponsored program at HRiA. Dr. Cardoso has 15 years of experience leading research on interpersonal violence, community safety, and health equity. Her work is conducted in partnership with global institutions, state agencies, and community-based organizations in an effort to generate evidence that informs equity-focused public health programming and policy. Prior to joining the HAVI, Dr. Cardoso was a Deputy Director of the Office of Statistics and Evaluation at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH). There, she oversaw epidemiological work on a range of critical health topics and led initiatives with far-reaching impacts, including the Covid Community Impact Survey (CCIS) – MA’s first statewide research assessing the impact of the pandemic on marginalized communities. CCIS enabled not only a more equitable pandemic response, but a more sustained focus on building equity into State data systems, an effort that will generate lasting improvements in health equity across Massachusetts. Dr. Cardoso holds a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University, and a Bachelor’s degree in English from Brown University.