Lydia Stazen
Director | Institute of Global Homelessness
Lydia has dedicated her career to building a world where all people have a place to call home and a strong foundation upon which they can build the lives they envision for themselves. Lydia has held executive leadership roles in anti-poverty organizations across the Midwest, focusing on housing, employment, education, and policy advocacy.
Immediately prior to joining the Institute for Global Homelessness, she served as Vice Chancellor of Advancement and President of the City Colleges of Chicago Foundation, where key achievements included establishing a $500,000 fund for student basic needs emergencies and securing funding for a full-time staff position to drive a college-wide response for students experiencing homelessness. She also served for several years as Vice President of All Chicago Making Homelessness History, where she was instrumental in integrating homeless data with medical data to help patients experiencing homelessness access housing services.
Her expertise spans systems change, collective impact, fundraising, communications and marketing, program design, outcomes and data tracking and analysis, nonprofit management, government administration, executive search, and more. She was a “Greater Good” fellow at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 2015, has been a featured panelist at the Association for Fundraising Professional’s Midwest Conference, and is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE).
When she’s not traveling the world helping communities address homelessness, you can find Lydia swimming competitively, inhaling fiction, or hunting for Chicago’s perfect brunch.
Julia Wagner
Program Manager | Institute of Global Homelessness
Julia’s experiences volunteering with Amnesty International and homeless organizations in Chicago grew her awareness of injustice and privilege, and spurred her passion for homeless issues and building a world based on equity and inclusion.
Prior to joining IGH, Julia served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Advisor for the AIDSFree Project, where she worked with teams from 13 countries to track and improve performance. She has also worked in Namibia and South Africa on projects focused on empowering youth, forming continuum of care networks, and engaging civil society organizations. Her experience includes creating data management systems, building dashboards and tools to make data more accessible for decision making, and providing capacity building and technical assistance to field-based partners.
Julia holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Her graduate school capstone project focused on designing a new evidenced-based service delivery plan for two large homeless shelters using research on best practices, analysis of homeless population data, and GIS mapping of neighborhood services.
In her free time, Julia enjoys cooking, spending time with friends and family, biking along Chicago’s lakefront, and listening to podcasts.
Tiffany Connolly
Administrative Assistant | Institute of Global Homelessness
Tiffany is the Administrative Assistant at the Institute of Global Homelessness (IGH). She is passionate about progression, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. Through her work, she supports IGH’s efforts to achieve individual and team goals; organize and facilitate collaborations, projects, and convenings; and curate and share useful information, tools, and resources on homelessness and intersectionality. She also supports IGH’s effort to achieve its diversity, equity, and inclusion mission.
Tiffany holds a B.A. in Psychology from DePaul University and is pursuing continuing education in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Reese Hagy
Research Assistant | Institute of Global Homelessness
Reese graduated from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities with a BA in political science and a minor in philosophy. He is currently pursuing his Master of Public Policy at DePaul University. Prior to joining IGH, Reese worked as a public policy researcher, providing regulatory and policy support to federal agencies. He has also worked as an election judge, an electoral reform advocate, and has volunteered for a number of political campaigns and causes. Reese spends his free time perfecting his deep dish pizza craft, starting more books than he finishes, and working on his jump shot.
