Vanessa Sacks, MPP, is a research scientist and deputy program area director for Youth Development at Child Trends, where she has spent more than 13 years studying the factors that support or hinder young people’s achievement of economic stability and overall well-being. She specializes in two intersecting areas: out-of-school time programs and college and career readiness, with a particular focus on youth and young adults who are disengaged or at risk of disengaging from school and work.

Vanessa has led or supported multiple evaluations of out-of-school time and school-based programs, including the New York Public Library's drop-in after-school program and youthCONNECT, a Youth Invest Partners initiative that convened multiple youth-serving nonprofits within school settings to deliver wraparound supports. Her work includes both evaluation and direct technical assistance: Vanessa has evaluated the programs of organizations that connect disengaged youth to educational and employment pathways, and has led Child Trends' partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Generation Work initiative. For the latter, Vanessa and her colleagues provided technical assistance to workforce development partnerships on integrating positive youth development into employer engagement strategies and understanding what positive youth development looks like in the workplace.

Vanessa brings a wide-ranging methodological toolkit to her work, designing and executing quantitative data collection, longitudinal analyses, and mixed-methods evaluations across diverse program contexts. She works closely with nonprofit and government partners—including Spark the Journey and the DC Department of Behavioral Health—to strengthen data cultures, develop theories of change and logic models, and build continuous quality improvement systems that help organizations use evidence to make better decisions.

Prior to Child Trends, Vanessa worked as a fundraising and communications consultant, an experience that deepened her understanding of the nonprofit sector and continues to inform her collaborative, practice-oriented approach to research.

Vanessa holds a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Featured projects

Generation Work

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Ready for Work