Biography

Roberta Downing is a social psychologist with a background in public policy, research and direct service with low-income communities. Currently, she is the Deputy Director of the Office of Federal and Regional Affairs in the Executive Office of District of Colubmia Mayor Muriel Bowser. She has served as adjunct faculty in the Professional Psychology Program at The George Washington University (GWU), teaching an LGBT health policy class for the inaugural LGBT Graduate Certificate Program at GWU. Prior to working for Mayor Bowser, Downing was a Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer at the American Psychological Association. Downing also spent four years as a Senior Legislative Associate at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a leading national think tank that focuses on fiscal policy and public low-income programs. Her portfolio at CBPP included domestic policy issues related to federal food assistance and income security programs. Before joining CBPP, Downing handled health care, social security and older Americans policy for Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. Prior to working for Sen. Brown, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health as part of the W. K. Kellogg Community Health Scholars Program. Downing's research focused on economic justice, community-based participatory research, and gender, race and class-based health disparities. Downing began her public policy career as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Fellow in the health policy office of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, working for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. She completed her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to earning her doctorate, Downing spent four years working in the AIDS community in Los Angeles.