M. V. Lee Badgett is a professor of economics and the former director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA's Williams Institute and was the Institute's first Research Director. Her current research topics are LGBT poverty and employment discrimination, and she is writing a new book on the economic case for LGBT equality. Her past research debunked the myth of gay affluence and examined the positive experience with regards to marriage equality for same-sex couples in the US and Europe. M. V. Lee's third book "The Public Professor: How to Use Your Research to Change the World (New York Univ Press, 2015)" gives practical advice to academics about engagement in public debates. She has consulted with the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, United States Agency for International Development, and other international agencies on issues related to the economic cost of exclusion of LGBT people, and she has testified on her work before the US Congress, many state legislatures, and in California's Prop 8 trial. M. V. Lee holds a Bachelor's degree in economics from University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Berkeley. She is a Fellow of Session 551, Salzburg Global LGBT Forum: Strengthening Communities - LGBT Human Rights and Social Cohesion.
