Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom

Alicia is the director for applied research and learning with Children’s Funding Project. She brings twenty years of experience in working with community partnerships, philanthropic partners, and policy bodies that provide essential supports to children, youth, families and communities and seven years’ experience leading fiscal mapping projects in cities including Denver, Detroit, New Orleans and Baltimore, and Hennepin County (Minneapolis) as well as the states of North Carolina, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

Alicia has also provided fiscal mapping technical assistance to a cohort of communities receiving Promise Zone, Promise Neighborhood, or Performance Partnership Pilot federal grants. She has served as the principal investigator for the Use of Research Evidence Learning Cohort Design project and primary consultant to the Democratizing Evidence curation project in partnership with the William T. Grant Foundation to advance evidence-based practice and policymaking and research-practice partnerships in the child- and youth-serving fields. Alicia brings wide-ranging expertise in youth development practice and policy, and is the author of numerous publications including Funding Brighter Futures: How Local Governments are Enhancing Investments in Kids, From Soft Skills to Hard Data: Measuring Youth Program Outcomes, and Research Practice Partnerships, an online curation project developed in partnership with the William T. Grant Foundation. Alicia holds master’s degrees in social work and public policy from the University of Michigan.