Sydney Briggs is a research scientist in reproductive health and family formation for Child Trends. In this capacity, she performs key analytic, communications, and project management roles for the Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center and the National Research Center for Hispanic Children and Families.

Prior to joining Child Trends, Sydney worked as a senior research associate for the Child and Family Research Partnership (CFRP) at the University of Texas at Austin. At CFRP, she led a statewide study to understand the impact of court appointed special advocates on the outcomes of children in foster care, evaluated best practices for improving collaboration between domestic violence service providers and local child welfare offices, and studied the replication of evidence-based sexual education curricula in the community college context. Sydney’s research interests center on intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention and intervention, and her work is informed by on-the-ground experience working and volunteering with people experiencing IPV, survivors of human trafficking, women seeking abortion funding, and asylum seekers in immigration detention. Sydney’s work and interests are guided by her belief that thoughtful, compassionate policy—informed by research and truly representative perspectives—can promote equity and well-being. As such, in 2018 she took a brief departure from research to lead a political campaign seeking to elect the first openly transgender person to Austin City Council.

Sydney speaks fluent Spanish, was a 2018 fellow with the New Leaders Council, and co-authored a chapter on former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in the forthcoming volume Women and the Presidency in the Americas. She holds a Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from Rutgers University – New Brunswick.