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. She worked alongside families with low incomes on topics such as paid leave, immigration enforcement, and immigrant integration. 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 draws from her research expertise and diverse work experience at a 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 and continues her community engagement by raising funds for her local food pantry and the NGO in India. 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.