Lauren N. McCarthy, Ph.D., is the senior director of research and impact at the Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC), where she oversees the research agenda and provides oversight, guidance and direction for multiple research initiatives and programs. She also leads impact analysis and reporting, ensuring that SUMC’s projects are data-driven, culturally responsive and community-centered.

Her experience includes coordinating large-scale policy evaluations, designing capacity-building programs with community partners and guiding culturally responsive research methodologies. Her work focuses on the analysis, diffusion and impact of investments in transportation systems, emphasizing community-centered outcomes. Before joining SUMC, she was program manager and senior researcher at the Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy at George Mason University and was selected as a Google public policy fellow in 2019, focusing on technology adoption in marginalized communities.

She earned her Ph.D. from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where her dissertation, “Shared Mobility Systems: Frameworks to Understand the Growth of an Industry and the Prospect of Public Investments,” explores diffusion models and evaluation frameworks applicable to novel transportation technologies, particularly micromobility. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration and a master’s in geography from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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