George McCarthy

George McCarthy is director of Urban Opportunity at the Ford Foundation. His unit seeks to provide low-income people with better access to jobs and opportunities by supporting regional planning efforts, transportation investments, and housing development policies that alleviate poverty and reduce its concentration in metropolitan areas.

McCarthy previously administered a program that focused on using homeownership to build assets for low-income families and their communities. Before joining Ford, McCarthy worked as a senior research associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been an assistant professor at Bard College and a resident scholar at the Jerome Levy Economics Institute, among other affiliations.

McCarthy received a bachelor's degree from the University of Montana, a master's degree from Duke University, and a Ph. D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.