Lanae Davis (she/her) has spent her career as a researcher at CPR, joining the team in 1997. Lanae leads studies on applied, policy-relevant research and evaluation designed to translate conceptual frameworks into evidence-based, programmatic solutions. Her work focuses on developing, implementing, and rigorously testing interventions that improve outcomes for low-income women, children, youth, and families experiencing barriers to economic mobility.
Lanae works collaboratively with federal, state, and local partners to design studies that integrate quantitative and qualitative methods, leverage administrative data, and support continuous program improvement. Her experience spans multi-site randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental impact evaluations, rapid-cycle testing, and mixed-methods implementation research.
Her leadership on the multiphase evaluation of the Pathways to Success intervention—which targeted youth at risk of homelessness as they exited foster care—produced evidence that contributed to the program’s inclusion as an evidence-based intervention for child welfare systems. She directed a cross-agency study to develop a sustainable, replicable methodology for estimating youth homelessness using multi-system administrative data. This project advanced the field’s understanding of how to systematically incorporate lived expertise into methodological design and informed new systems-level approaches for identifying service access points and preventing youth homelessness.
The focus of her work has been on two-generation and whole-family strategies that shift human services systems toward coordinated, family-centered approaches to economic security and housing stability. Lanae develops intervention models that emphasize cross-system alignment, lived expert engagement with targeted services that lead to improved outcomes for disadvantaged populations. Through rigorous evaluation, Lanae’s research generates actionable evidence to strengthen human services policies and practices that scale strategies to improve social programs.
She routinely translates research into actionable guidance, developing toolkits, and agency guides and resources to improve program design and system performance. Her findings have informed federal rulemaking, including expansions of noncustodial parent employment services within child support programs, improvements to whole-family child support policies, and enhanced approaches addressing parenting time and safety for survivors of domestic violence. She disseminates results through peer-reviewed publications, technical reports, and national conference presentations across the fields of child welfare, homelessness, economic mobility, human services systems change, and child support. Lanae serves on the National Child Support Engagement Association’s Research Sub-committee and serves as a subject matter expert for the Youth Collaboratory.
Passion Statement
Lanae’s commitment to research and systems improvement is grounded in lived experience. Growing up in a rural community exposed her to the structural inequities that limit access to economic opportunity, healthcare, and education. These early observations shaped her commitment to evaluating programs that inform equitable policy design and strengthen service delivery systems for families facing systemic disadvantages. She carries this commitment into her community engagement as well. Lanae serves on the board of a nonprofit supporting low-income women and children, contributes evaluation and grant-writing expertise to a local school, coordinates back to school and holiday assistance efforts that have reached more than 2,500 children, and raises funds for Children’s Hospital Colorado. These experiences reinforce the broader purpose of her research: to contribute to systems that equitably meet the needs of families and support their long-term stability and mobility.