Phyllis Betts is a sociologist and was the the founding Director of the Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action (CBANA) at the University of Memphis. She earned her PhD at The University of Chicago where she was a research associate with the South Shore Community Study. Her work focuses on the role of housing and neighborhoods and neighborhood change in quality of life outcomes (neighborhood effects); poverty and concentrated neighborhood poverty as a risk factor for children and families and the more expansive role of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class in quality of life outcomes; and social change using data to mobilize policy change and design intervention strategies to improve quality of life for families and in neighborhoods.