Lisa Servon

Lisa Servon is the Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Professor of City and Regional Planning at University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and former dean at The New School. An acclaimed scholar and lecturer, she studies and writes about poverty, inequality and issues of gender and race in the US. Her most recent book is "The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives." Other books include "Bridging the Digital Divide: Technology, Community, and Public Policy," and "Bootstrap Capital: Microenterprises and the American Poor."

Servon has served on the boards of Ascendus and the Consumer Advisory Board of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She led the Center for Excellence in Consumer Financial Lives in Transition at Filene and was a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

In addition to her scholarship, Servon is an activist, teaching financial education courses to incarcerated people at the Riverside Correctional Facility and working with the Still We Rise Freedom Coalition. She facilitated Queens of the Penstroke, a writing group consisting of formerly incarcerated women who performed at Penn’s Kelly Writer’s House and on WXPN.

Servon publishes extensively in academic journals and has contributed to The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post.