¹ú²úÊÓƵ

Meegan Dugan Adell leads ¹ú²úÊÓƵ Chicago, which is based at The Chicago Community Trust. Her work focuses on how local communities and public policy work to improve equity and economic mobility.

Prior to joining ¹ú²úÊÓƵ, Adell worked as a consultant, specializing in ideation, policy research, advocacy, and strategy to help foundations and nonprofits improve their impact on economic equity. Recent work includes leading the Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition through a user experience research and career pathways planning project and a paper on increasing bachelor’s degree attainment among Black and Latino communities in Illinois.

Previously, Adell worked as a senior policy manager at Women Employed, developing and advocating for policy solutions to improve low-income women’s access to higher education. In that role, she led a successful effort to increase need-based aid in Illinois by $35 million and to integrate new policies supporting returning adults’ higher education completion.

A former McCormick-Tribune Urban Community Development Fellow at the University of Chicago, Adell worked with Mark Joseph on a groundbreaking study of new mixed-income housing developments in Chicago. Prior to graduate school, she worked in community organizing and workforce development in the city of Chicago, including welfare-to-work projects with justice-involved individuals at Bethel New Life and The Safer Foundation.

Adell holds a BA in sociology and Spanish from North Park University and an AM from the University of Chicago.