Madeleine Gibbons-Shapiro (MPP ‘27) grew up in San Jose, California and earned her B.A. in sociology from Georgetown University. During her undergraduate years, she served as a G.U. Impacts fellow conducting disability rights research in Kazakhstan and was awarded the C. Margaret Hall Senior Thesis Award for her investigation into gender and self-presentation in dating app profile curation. After graduating, Gibbons-Shapiro worked as the project coordinator on an NIH-funded Columbia University study on people with physical disabilities’ trust in precision medical research. In the three years following, she was the program manager for Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation’s Housing department, managing a HUD eviction prevention grant and developing improved referral processes for Northern Manhattan and the Southern Bronx’s low-income community to access no-cost legal services. At the Ford School and beyond, Gibbons-Shapiro aims to work in local disability, health and housing policy with a focus on accessibility and advocacy for marginalized groups. In her free time, she enjoys reading, running, and baking.