Introducing Our New Social Innovation Director

I am delighted to announce that Dave Wilkinson will step forward to serve as the new Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. Under Dave’s leadership, the Office will be focused on strengthening communities and enabling upward economic mobility by finding and growing approaches that work best for communities in need. 

Using the tools of evidence-based policy, philanthropy, impact finance and human capital, Dave will lead an Office of Social Innovation that supports the development and launch of data-driven approaches across a range of domestic policy priorities from education and job growth to economic development and healthy communities. 

President Obama has prioritized using evidence in social programs to drive better results. A myriad of Administration programs speak to this legacy, from the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative, through which the federal government and hundreds of local partners are advancing what works to ensure all youth have opportunity to reach their full potential; to the Innovation Center at CMS, which is finding ways to deliver better care, smarter spending, and healthier people by paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity of care they give patients; to the innovation funds at CNCS, USAID, and the Departments of Education and Labor that are finding and scaling new solutions that work, to the new Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth that enables local communities to focus on outcomes and ease administrative burdens. And the President’s 2016 Budget does even more to build evidence and scale what works while reducing barriers to implementing evidence-based policies through approaches like Pay for Success.

Dave and his team at the Office of Social Innovation will continue working to advance approaches that enable government and our remarkable social sector, in partnership, to build and scale what works, using evidence to drive better outcomes and continuously improve the tools that enable Americans in challenging conditions to build better lives for themselves.

Cecilia Muñoz is Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council.