Lisa Servon is an American professor who holds the position of chair of the City and Regional Planning Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in studies of urban poverty, community development, economic development, and issues of gender. She is one of the primary faculty in the Community and Economic Development concentration. Her research has explored economic insecurity, consumer financial services, and financial justice. [1]
Servon received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Bryn Mawr College and went on to earn a Master of Arts in history of art from the University of Pennsylvania. Her Ph.D. is in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley. [1]
Prior to joining the faculty at PennDesign, Servon was a professor of management and urban policy at The New School. She also served as dean at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy. [1] In addition to several books (see below), Servon has contributed to The New Yorker , The Atlantic , and The Wall Street Journal . She has also appeared on PBS News Hour, Marketplace Money, and Radio Times. Her research is also featured in the documentary Spent: Looking for Change. [2]
Servon's most recent work focuses on alternatives to traditional banks used by many Americans, including check cashers and payday lenders. Servon worked as a teller for several months at both a check casher and a payday lender seeking to shed light on why people are turning away from banks. The resulting work is called The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives. [3]
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is among the most selective and oldest law schools in the United States, and is currently ranked fourth in the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Penn Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Laws (LL.C.M.), Master in Law (M.L.), and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.).
A payday loan is a short-term unsecured loan, often characterized by high interest rates.
Amy Gutmann is an American academic and diplomat who is the United States Ambassador to Germany. She was the eighth president of the University of Pennsylvania. In November 2016, the school announced that her contract had been extended to 2022, which made her the longest-serving president in the history of the University of Pennsylvania. Gutmann resigned from her role as president on February 8, 2022, following her confirmation by the Senate as ambassador, after 18 years at the University.
Anita Arrow Summers is an American educator of public policy, management, real estate and education and is Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania.
The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, commonly known as Penn GSE, is an Ivy League top-ranked educational research school in the United States. Formally established as a department in 1893 and a school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1915, Penn GSE has historically had research strengths in teaching and learning, the cultural contexts of education, language education, quantitative research methods, and practitioner inquiry. Pam Grossman is the current dean of Penn GSE; she succeeded Andrew C. Porter in 2015.
Anita de la Rosa Berrizbeitia is a landscape theorist, teacher, and author. She continues to play an integral role in the renewed visibility of landscape architecture as a cultural practice. She is currently Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Appointed in 2015, she is the 14th Chair of the oldest landscape architecture department in the world and only the second female to hold the position. Prior to coming to Harvard University she was the associate chair of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
The unbanked are adults who do not have their own bank accounts. Along with the underbanked, they may rely on alternative financial services for their financial needs, where these are available.
The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) is the center for health services research, health policy, and health care management education at the University of Pennsylvania. It is based in the Colonial Penn Center on Locust Walk, at the heart of Penn's campus.
Susan M. Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate, and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Director for the Wharton GeoSpatial Initiative and Lab, and the co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She also co-directs the Spatial Integration Laboratory for Urban Systems at the University of Pennsylvania. As an economist, she is frequently sought for comment on real estate market trends in well known media outlets—a recent interview with the International Monetary Fund summarizes her views and research.
Nancy Joan Hirschmann is an American political scientist. She is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania where she specializes in the history of political thought, analytical philosophy, feminist theory, disability theory, and the intersection of political theory and public policy.
John L. Jackson Jr. is an American anthropologist, filmmaker, author, and university administrator. He is currently the Provost and Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Jackson is the author of Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001); Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005); Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008); Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (2013). He has also directed films that explore questions of race, diaspora, migration, and media.
Francesca Ammon is an assistant professor in the City and Regional Planning and Historic Preservation departments at the University of Pennsylvania. An urban historian, she focuses on changes to the built environment over time. Recently, her work has centered around the urban renewal period in the mid-twentieth century.
Zahra Fakhraai is an Iranian-Canadian materials scientist who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Fakhraai does research focused on glass transition, nonlinear optics, nanoparticle plasmonics, and polymer physics. She studies the impact of nanoconfinement on the structure of materials. She was awarded the 2019 American Physical Society John H. Dillon Medal. Fakhraai was one of the researchers to start laying the ground work to better understand the optical properties of glass.
Amy Laura Wax is an American legal scholar and neurologist. She is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. She has often made remarks about non-white people that have been described as white supremacist and racist.
Wendell Eric Pritchett is an American lawyer, legal scholar, professor, and university administrator. He is currently the James S. Riepe Presidential Professor of Law and Education at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. From February to June 2022, Pritchett served as interim president of the University of Pennsylvania; he is the first Black individual to serve as the university's president.
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is an American-Iranian historian. Currently, she serves as Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on boundary disputes, borderland histories, gender, and identity politics in the Middle East.
Deborah A. Thomas is an American anthropologist and filmmaker, and is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published books and articles on the history, culture, and politics of Jamaica; and on human rights, sexuality, and globalization in the Caribbean arena. She has co-produced and co-directed two experimental films, and has co-curated a multimedia exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2016, she began a four-year term as editor-in-chief of the journal American Anthropologist. Before pursuing her career as an anthropologist, Thomas performed as a professional dancer with Urban Bush Women, a New York dance company that used art to promote social equity by illuminating the experiences of disenfranchised people.
Nadia Lauren Dowshen is an American pediatrician and adolescent medicine physician. She specializes in the care of youth living with HIV infection and medical care to transgender and gender-diverse youth. Dowshen researches health inequality, access to care, and promoting resilience in LGBT youth. As an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, she is also the medical director and co-founder of the Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic.
Lily Song is a Lecturer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. As an urban planner, Song's most known for her research in design and race, class, and gender in American cities, social equity, housing, sustainability, and transportation and her community organizing with the Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP), where she fought against environmental injustices.
Vivian Lynette Gadsden is an American psychologist who is an education researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research considers the social and cultural factors that affect learning and literacy. She is interested in intergenerational learning within African-American families.