Ananya Roy, professor of city and regional planning

Ananya Roy is a professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley and education director of the campus’s Blum Center for Developing Economies and co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center. She works on issues of poverty and inequality. A native of Calcutta, India, her books have tackled the urgent problem of persistent poverty in the world's largest cities. Her most recent research examines and evaluates the most popular global approaches to poverty alleviation, such as microfinance. At the Blum Center for Developing Economies, she teaches a core course on global poverty that serves 700 students each fall.