Featured Projects

Keeping Focus on Feeding America

Food insecurity is a perennial problem — which means it risks becoming invisible. Our annual polling for Feeding America is designed to keep it front and center by surfacing the cascading human costs of hunger, uncovering surprising bipartisan consensus on solutions, and amplifying the voices of food-insecure Americans themselves in media coverage and policy debates. The result: research that gives Feeding America’s leaders the authority and the evidence they need to speak confidently on behalf of the millions they serve.

What Really Shapes How Americans Think About Race

Headlines tell us our demographics predict our beliefs — that identity determines ideology. But do they? In partnership with the Perception Institute and the ACLU, we set out to map the underlying belief systems that actually shape how people understand race, and what drives their political attitudes and behavior. What we found challenges the conventional wisdom: perspectives on race vary as much within racial and ethnic groups as between them, and more than nine in ten Americans — across the ideological spectrum — uphold the value of racial equality. Research that looks beneath the surface of identity often finds more common ground than anyone expected.

Can Sports Help Shift the Narrative on Racism and Health in America?

Can sports reach across divides and open minds on issues like structural racism and health equity? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had a hunch that athletes and sports culture could reach new audiences. They hired us to map the American sports fan landscape in ways no one had before, and found that even fans with conflicting views believed athletes had a right to speak — and listened when they did. Our insights helped shape not just a research agenda, but an entire new program area for the foundation — one that has since resulted in athlete partnerships, an award-winning documentary about track and field world champion Allyson Felix emphasizing key themes, and a Minecraft game that includes social justice themes.

What Does Gen Z Really Think About Gender?

The public conversation about Gen Z and gender has generated plenty of headlines and hot takes, but not so many truly rich insights. We set out to change that — through deep, open-ended listening with diverse groups of young men and women across the country. What we found is a generation under real pressure: young men straining under rigid masculine norms that demand stoicism, self-sufficiency, and external success at the cost of their emotional lives; young women navigating relentless pressures regarding appearance, self-doubt, and anxiety about whether they can have the lives they actually want. But when we moved both groups into visionary territory — asking them to envision life on an entirely different planet where gender politics aren’t so fraught — something striking emerged: a shared longing for more emotional freedom, deeper and more genuine connection, and real equity in responsibility and opportunity alike.