Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), District of Columbia
Suma Setty is a senior policy analyst on CLASP’s immigration and immigrant families team. Prior to CLASP, Suma worked at the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), leading and coordinating mixed-methods research studies and conducting policy analyses that examined the impact of public policies on families with low-incomes. She worked alongside families with low incomes on topics such as paid leave, child care, immigration enforcement, and public benefits like WIC, Medicaid, and SNAP. She also coordinated a needs assessment update for New Hampshire’s preschool development grant and the National Council on Disability’s study on Medicaid dental coverage for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She assisted with translating policy into code for NCCP’s online policy analysis tool, the Family Resource Simulator, to assess the interactions between critical work supports and calculate the net resources of families with low incomes, focusing on immigrant families.
In her work at CLASP, she leads the research portfolio for the immigration and immigrant families and for the Children Thrive Action Network (CTAN), a coalition of organizations nation-wide focused on the well-being of immigrant children and children in mixed-status families. She works to connect researchers with advocacy on behalf of children in mixed-status families, leads research projects documenting the impact of immigration enforcement on families with children and evaluating immigrants' access to public benefit programs, and provides technical assistance to child care providers on how to protect their clients and staff from immigration enforcement. She holds a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and political science from Macalester College. She has previously worked at bilingual elementary school, a rights-based NGO in rural India, and on the campaign to pass the Affordable Care Act. She has volunteered as an adult ESL educator, raised funds for her local food pantry and the NGO in India, and serves on the board of Families for Freedom, a rights-based group based in NYC that serves immigrants.
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