Yvonne Yen Liu has played at being many things in her life. Her first job was at an ice cream shop in Flushing, New York at age 13. She shared the night shift with a colleague. To pass the time, they would make sundaes – such as marshmallow-covered pecan and strawberry cheesecake with fudge sprinkles – for the other to eat. To this day, Yvonne detests ice cream.
Today, Yvonne is a worker-owner with Solidarity Research Center, a collective of researchers, storytellers, and creatives who oppose systems that hurt working people and the planet and prefigure alternatives. She has 15 years of experience supporting racial justice and social impact organizations with quantitative and qualitative research. She has designed, managed, and executed complex research projects using methods such as multi-sited surveys, industry and labor market analysis, economic input-output modeling, and multivariable regression.
Yvonne is passionate about telling stories through words, images, or data to shift hearts, minds, and guts. She is fluent in framing issues using tested values to deepen public engagement to take action. Her writing has been featured in Colorlines, In These Times, and Yes Magazine.
Yvonne has a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and a MA degree in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she pursued a PhD. Although a native of New York City, she and the city have parted ways. She is based in Los Angeles, California where the sun smiles down on her every day.