Marokey Sawo is a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center for Equity and
Community Impact, with over eight years of experience in data-driven research. Sawo
specializes in wealth and income disparities, labor markets, and how these relate to
gender, race, disability, and economic policy. She is skilled in quantitative analysis as
well as survey programming and administration, literature reviews, and data
visualization. Sawo is a co-author of a report that examines the state of research on the
digital divide and builds a framework for expanding digital opportunity. She regularly
presents at conferences and events to distill complex findings for diverse audiences.
Before joining Urban, Sawo worked as an economic analyst at the Economic Policy
Institute, where she researched low-wage workers and economic trends at both
national and state levels. There, she led work building a more robust methodology for a
series that estimates unemployment rates by race/ethnicity at the state level on a
quarterly basis. She was also previously a researcher at the Groundwork Collaborative,
where she focused on the economics of anti-austerity at the federal level,
unemployment insurance, and broader labor market conditions. Sawo holds a BA in
economics from Vassar College and an MSc in economic theory and policy from the
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.