Chapin Hall

Sarah Berger Gonzalez is a Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on building an evidence base and scalable policy solutions to address the social disparities and inequities facing youth at-risk of experiencing homelessness and housing instability. Berger Gonzalez is currently working with jurisdictions and young people with lived experience in the design, and in research and evaluation of unconditional direct cash transfer programs coupled with optional supportive services including housing navigation, financial coaching, post-secondary educational opportunities, and peer-to-peer mentoring to support a pathway to safe and stable housing.

Prior to joining Chapin Hall, Berger Gonzalez was Program Manager at the Stanford Basic Income Lab where she led activities linking basic income pilots to policy. She was instrumental in building the first ever map of basic income related experiments and creating and launching the Lab’s interactive Research Visualization tool. Berger Gonzalez spent more than a decade at the World Bank as a Social Protection Specialist developing integrated social protection systems to optimize the delivery of services with a human-centered approach. She also established and managed international income support programs to tackle the multi-dimensional elements of poverty through creative responses to the needs of the most disadvantaged communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Central Asia. Preceding her work at the World Bank, Berger Gonzalez was a Fulbright Scholar in Osorno, Chile working with the Indigenous population, the Mapuche Huilliche.

Berger Gonzalez obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences at Boston College and her Master of Arts in Public Policy from Georgetown University.