HUIXIAN (ANITA) LI

Huixian (Anita) Li was a former Policy Assistant at the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality’s Economic Security & Opportunity Initiative. Anita provided research and data analysis for various ESOI projects, including the Youth Employment Pathways project, a national strategy to engage disconnected youth ages from 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor working.

Anita graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. with Distinction in Policy Analysis and Management in 2017. While at Cornell, she served as a Research Assistant focused on the effects of anti-poverty policies and mass incarceration. Anita was also involved in the student-run think tank Cornell Roosevelt Institute, where she served as a policy analyst and then the director at the Center for Economic Policy and Development. She interned at New York City’s Human Resources Administration in 2015, conducting research on health insurance policies in New York City.

Anita was born and grew up in Guangdong, China before her family resettled in New York City. She first developed an interest in racial disparities and urban poverty as an observer of the city’s diverse communities.