Provided by Wikipedia Xavier de Souza Briggs (born 1968) is an American educator, social scientist, and policy expert, known for his work on economic opportunity, social capital, democratic governance, and leading social change. He has influenced housing and urban policy in the United States, contributing to the concept of the "geography of opportunity," which examines the consequences of housing segregation, by race or economic status, for the well-being and life prospects of children and families (see also residential segregation in the United States). He is a former member of the Harvard and MIT faculties, currently a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
From 2005 to 2014, he was a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He returned to the MIT faculty in 2011. In January 2014, he went on leave anew, to join the Ford Foundation as Vice President of Inclusive Economies and Markets — leading the foundation's economic opportunity work worldwide—and later, following a reorganization, its U.S. Programs. At the end of 2019, he left the foundation to begin a visiting appointment at New York University (NYU).
