Amy Castro Baker
Assistant Professor, School of Social Policy and Practice
University of Pennsylvania
Amy Castro Baker, PhD, MSW is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the School of Social Policy and Practice and serves as the co-PI of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration under Mayor Michael Tubbs. She is also a distinguished visiting professor at Penn’s School of Nursing (AY 19–20), an affiliated faculty member of the Alice Paul Center, and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. She was the 2017 recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award at the School of Social Policy and Practice, where she teaches courses on policy analysis, gender, and impacting government.
Dr. Baker’s research explores economic mobility, guaranteed income, innovation, and how social policies produce gender and race disparities in housing and lending. She was awarded the GADE Research Award, the Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Dissertation Award and the Nina Fortin Award for her work on women and risky lending during the foreclosure crisis. Dr. Baker is also the principal investigator of a longitudinal economic mobility intervention following intergenerational cohorts of immigrant families in Jersey City and the South Bronx.
Prior to her time at Penn, she spent more than a decade working with nonprofits and community-based agencies in Philadelphia and New York City. She has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Economic Security Project, the Asset Funders Network, and the Pascale Sykes Foundation. Her research has been published by Social Service Review, the Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, Social Work, The American Journal of Public Health, and featured throughout the popular press. She earned a PhD in social welfare and a master of philosophy from the City University of New York, a master’s of social work from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s in social work from Cairn University.