Xavier Briggs

Xavier de Souza Briggs (born 1968) is an American educator, social scientist, and policy expert, known for his work on economic opportunity, social capital, democratic governance, and leading social change. He has influenced housing and urban policy in the United States, contributing to the concept of the "geography of opportunity," which examines the consequences of housing segregation.

Briggs has taught at Harvard University from 1996 to 2005, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2005 to 2014, and from 2019 to 2021 at New York University (NYU). He served as a political appointee (senior policy adviser) to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. From 2014 to 2019, he served as Vice President of Inclusive Economies and Markets and later U.S. Programs at the Ford Foundation. He has been a senior fellow at Brookings, the policy think tank since 2021. Briggs is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the National Academy of Public Administration.