Jodi Sandfort

Jodi Sandfort joined the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance as dean in January 2021. Dean Sandfort’s scholarship focuses on improving the implementation of social policy, particularly those policies designed to support low-income children and their families. Her leadership uses participatory methods to activate others to address systemic biases that are reproduced through practices and processes.

At the Evans School, she leads the staff and faculty, overseeing the operation of our $13.8 million budget in alignment with our mission. She has a deep commitment to ensuring that public universities engage their regions to both create value in supporting problem solving and substantially expand pathways into public service. Dean Sandfort brings a background in human centered design that is helping the school to center community voice in policy and implementation. She has led the creation of the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) that provides a platform for engagement and innovation and is currently co-leading a University of Washington initiative that focuses on our public university’s critical role in strengthening democracy and civic health. Since she arrived in Seattle, she also has focused her attention on developing a range of new under-graduate initiatives and new professional educational programs at the School.

Formerly a professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, she was the founder of the Future Services Institute that supported government redesign of programs and services. She also founded and was academic director of the Hubert Project, a global community focused on improving public policy education through development and sharing of multimedia learning materials, such as e-cases and video briefs. Dean Sandfort powered that work – and much of the innovation at the Evans School – from her engagement in the international Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter community of global engagement practioners.

Sandfort is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration, a distinguished honor recognizing her innovative leadership in the field and she serves on the Academy’s national board. She has authored books, many academic articles, chapters, and reports about design science and policy implementation, social welfare systems, organizational effectiveness, early childhood education, welfare reform, nonprofit management, and philanthropy. She is currently a member of the Steering Committee of the Volker Alliance Dean’s Forum and just stepped down from an nationally elected position on the Executive Council of the Network of Schools of Public Policy & Public Affairs. She serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration; and American Review of Public Administration.

In the early 2000s, Sandfort directed the human services program at the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis, where she managed a portfolio of $20 million in annual giving. She also worked as a senior strategy consultant and trainer with national and statewide foundations, a statewide nonprofit association, think tanks, and other nonprofit human service organizations. Sandfort was a Family Self-Sufficiency Scholar funded for five years by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She and her husband have two sons of whom she is exceedingly proud; she loves gardening, Nordic skiing, and – since moving to the Pacific Northwest – sea kayaking.