Deborah Moroney

Deborah Moroney, vice president at the American Institutes for Research, is a leading voice in youth development, implementation science, and cross-sector systems improvement who focuses on strengthening the conditions that help children, youth, and families thrive. Her work integrates research, evaluation, and practice with a strong commitment to improving opportunity, strengthening measurement approaches, and ensuring that evidence is accessible and useful for practitioners and decision makers.

Dr. Moroney leads AIR’s Human and Community Development program, which includes more than 90 projects supported by federal agencies, state and local governments, and philanthropic partners. In this role, she guides program strategy, growth, and quality across initiatives spanning safety and justice, community health, children and families, and youth development. She also promotes collaboration across AIR’s programs to align research, policy, and implementation supports that strengthen outcomes across the life course.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Moroney has led complex national and local studies focused on implementation, program effectiveness, and systems change. Her work includes designing approaches to measure developmental outcomes that are often difficult to capture and supporting organizations in using data for continuous improvement. She has played a key role in advancing research and practice related to adolescent development and community supports.

Dr. Moroney continues to contribute to the field through publications, keynote presentations, and leadership on national advisory bodies. She has served on multiple committees and workshops for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and most recently chaired the consensus committee for The Future of Youth Development: Building Systems and Strengthening Programs (NASEM, 2025). She also advises national youth-serving organizations and collaborates with cross-sector networks focused on strengthening program quality, systems alignment, and youth economic mobility.

Before joining AIR, Dr. Moroney was the director of community-based programs for a large multisite child welfare organization in Cook County, Illinois and she was a faculty member in educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.