William Elliot
Speaker

William Elliott

Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work; Founding Director of the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion (AEDI)

Dr. Elliott is a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work. He is the founding director of the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion (AEDI) and a leading researcher in the fields of children's savings, student debt, and wealth inequality.

Shaped by his personal roots in poverty in a small steel mill city in Pennsylvania, Professor Elliott challenges individual beliefs and cultural values that surround funding for college, student debt, inequality, systemic patterns of poverty, and educational justice. Some of the college savings account programs he is currently conducting research on are the Oakland Promise in California, Prosperity Kids in New Mexico, K2C in San Francisco, Promise Indiana, and the Harold Alfond College challenge in Maine. He has published in several journals. His most recent book, Making Education Work for the Poor: The Potential of Children’s Savings Accounts (co-authored with Melinda Lewis) was released by Oxford Press in 2018.

Professional affiliations

University of Michigan