Brandi Gilbert

Brandi Gilbert is a research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. She has helped lead a number of projects focusing on disaster resilience as well as disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Most recently this has included an evaluation of Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Initiative and Resilience Academies and Capacity Building Initiative; an assessment of disaster preparedness and response capacities in a 10-state Midwest region, and a study examining mechanisms to expedite post-disaster housing recovery efforts.

In her past work, Gilbert has conducted studies focusing on disaster preparedness among community-based organizations, long-term Hurricane Katrina recovery among adolescent youth, housing recovery in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, economic impacts of the 2010 BP oil spill on families in Gulf Coast communities engaged in seafood and shipbuilding industries, and the role of retired and senior residents in disaster recovery initiative. Gilbert earned her bachelor's in elementary education from the University of Delaware and her PhD in sociology from University of Colorado Boulder.