Helping Institutions Use Data to Fuel Movements

I am a Data and Research Consultant for nonprofits and foundations. I draw on my training in sociology, demography, and biostatistics to offer clients a range of services including:

• Research and Analysis
• Data Visualization and Mapping
• Evaluation
• Interpretation of Data and Data Coaching for Communications
• Reports for Non-technical Audiences

Mission + About Me

I support nonprofits and foundations to harness the power of data to further their missions. My passion is turning advanced quantitative methods into tools that are clear, useful, accessible, and pleasing to the eye. 

I deeply believe that data has the power to fuel movements for gender, racial and economic justice. Research and data can help shift our awareness of our most complex social, economic, and political challenges. The more we understand, the better equipped we are to make real change. Data is on our side.

I bring an understanding of race and other systems of oppression to my work. I’m committed to increasing the level of political consciousness in the field of statistics and bringing the power of data to social movements.

I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and earned my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, a Master of Science in biostatistics at Harvard University, and a B.A. in biology at Dartmouth College. My research has been published in several academic journals and was featured in the New York Times (here and here). Moreover, I have policy and evaluation experience from my time as a Senior Research Associate at the New York City Department of Education.

Testimonial

“I had the pleasure of working with Ankit after bringing them on as a contractor to lead the development of spatial analyses for a report to be produced by my project team, Race to Equity. They were among several candidates I met with, and working with them proved I made the right choice. As a midsize city with a hyper-majority white population, Dane County poses a number of challenges analytically with sample data. Responding to those challenges while simultaneously producing data and analysis that is accessible to a nontechnical community audience is immensely complex, especially given the higher level of scrutiny such endeavors inevitably elicit. Ankit not only understood the stakes, but leaned into that complexity, identifying options and alternatives for dealing with methodologically complex data and challenging space-bound estimates, all while providing concise and accessible explanations of the relative advantages and disadvantages. Although I have a quantitative social science background, I was technically unfamiliar with GIS, while the rest of my team were generally statistical novices. It was essential that we each understood the analyses performed and could competently answer questions about them with accuracy. Ankit employed a number of different strategies to ensure our engagement and comprehension of their analyses including: producing additional analyses, facilitating discussions and answering questions, and writing summaries of analyses for review. Due to those efforts we were able to translate these complex analyses into accessible language required of any good advocacy tool. This work helped us better understand and shine light on the ways in which our County is organized spatially in racialized ways. Ankit's technical expertise along with their political astuteness, care, concern and commitment to the communities they work on behalf of make them not only a gifted scientist, but a fantastic advocate and consummate professional. I cannot speak more highly of them.”

–Dr. Michelle Robinson, former researcher at Kids Forward and current Director of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services' Office of Health Equity