Cynthia Osborne is the founder and director of the Child and Family Research Partnership (CFRP) and leads its national Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, home of the Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap (2020) for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. She is also Associate Dean for Academic Strategies and Director of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. She serves as Vice President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Policy Council, the leadership team responsible for setting policy and strategy for the association. She also directs The University of Texas at Austin’s institutional membership of SRCD’s University-Based Child Family Policy Consortium. Dr. Osborne’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of social policy, poverty and inequality, family and child wellbeing, and family demography.

She has extensive experience leading long-term evaluations of state and national programs, with the aim of helping organizations understand what works, and how to ensure sustainable implementation of effective policies. Her work includes evaluations of one of the largest home visiting programs in the country (Texas) and many critical state-level child welfare and child support programs. Previously, Dr. Osborne taught middle school in a low-income community in California. Dr. Osborne holds a Ph.D. in Demography and Public Affairs from Princeton University, a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a Master of Arts in Education from Claremont Graduate University.