Elizabeth Harris, PhD,
Founder
Before founding her own consulting business in 2020, Elizabeth Harris, PhD conducted
research nationally on programs for children, youth, young adults and parents. She led or
played a lead role in evaluations of large-scale Federal and State projects, including acting as the Principal Investigator for the State of California’s Title IV-E Waiver initiative. She also served as the child welfare lead on a Federally-funded pilot study to measure the effect of combining early family finding and family group decision making on permanency. Both projects were funded by Administration of Children and Families. Locally, she has worked with Arizona State University, the State of Arizona and nonprofit agencies to facilitate a collaborative project to improve outcomes for youth transitioning out of Arizona’s foster care system.
Dr. Harris is particularly interested in addressing disproportionality. She served as the project lead and expert consultant for the Children’s Bureau, a project of the Civil Rights Division of the California Attorney General’s Office. In that capacity, she worked on projects initiated by former Attorney General Kamala Harris, and continued under former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, to study civil rights violations, and racial inequities, in child welfare practice in California.
In addition to her evaluation expertise, Dr. Harris worked for five years within the child welfare system in San Francisco County, in a senior analyst capacity. That experience gave her a deep understanding of the daily workings on child welfare. Dr. Harris and her family have lived experience with the child welfare system, which informs her commitment to doing evaluations which will directly support the most vulnerable children, parents, caregivers and families.
Dr. Harris has a PhD in Sociology from Washington State University, with an emphasis on the Sociology of Families and the Sociology of Education.
She has taught courses on statistics, cultural diversity, family sociology, educational
sociology, non-profit management, grantwriting and program evaluation at California
State University, Washington State University, Yosemite Community College, and
Arizona State University. She is currently a researcher affiliated with the Center for
Child Well-Being at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University.