Hello! My name is Bennett Lovejoy, and I’m delighted to be the newest policy analyst at Scioto Analysis.
My path to public policy was far from linear—it started in the cornfields of Iowa. While studying English at the University of Iowa, I joined the Iowa Public Opinion Lab (IPOL), where I analyzed public opinion data on issues ranging from agricultural policy to abortion access. This role introduced me to the powerful role data can have in public policy.
Intrigued by the use of data visualization for argumentation, I continued my work in research, particularly with nonprofit and other tax-exempt organizations. During my time at the Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center, I worked with a team of researchers to update the Iowa Nonprofit Principles and Practices. I gained an understanding of the mechanisms that governed nonprofits and how they operated within the public-private ecosystem. Too often, well-intentioned policies fell short because they were built without input from the communities they impacted.
During the pandemic, I worked as an Americorps Legal Intern with Iowa Legal Aid’s Housing Department which helped stay evictions under the federal eviction moratorium. In the case of one client who was on dialysis, our work may have helped to save his life. Without stable housing, he was unlikely to make it to his weekly dialysis treatments.
I was struck by how deeply a single policy could impact this member of my community. The experience opened my eyes to the different tools needed to create real change: policy, advocacy, and direct-service.
Like many English majors, for a time I planned on attending law school—until the kind but unanimous advice from every attorney I knew convinced me otherwise. I was drawn to the strength of oral arguments, and the soundness of logic, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the human stories central to each case were too often obscured by technicalities.
While I considered my options, I worked full-time at a youth center in downtown Columbus as a member of their training and advocacy team. It was there, inside the unassuming brick-front building lined by yellow Gingko trees, that my worldview radically changed. I spent two years learning from people trying to navigate systems that weren’t designed for them. Their stories—of discouragement in education, of discrimination in workplaces, and of the precarious safety of online spaces—fundamentally changed how I saw public policy.
After two years at the youth center, I came across Ohio State University’s Translational Data Analytics Master’s Program — and I was reminded of those first graphs I saw at IPOL. Could this be the program that could finally teach me the necessary skills to make good on my dream?
Partially.
I joined the program and was introduced to statistics and data manipulation. These pieces started to build my strange little toolkit. I could tell a story, I could empathize, and now I could quantify.
But I realized that I could take it from there.
I dropped out of the program and started doing the work. Graduate school taught me that there was nothing I couldn’t teach myself for free.
So I started writing about poverty, uncovering the assumptions that underlie our social safety net. Immersed in the social security administration’s technical papers, I wrote about what I learned in a series of blog posts. I couldn’t help but notice the incongruity between what I read on paper and what I saw in my work.
I’ve worked with individuals and families recovering from intimate partner violence, facing imminent evictions, living off the land, struggling to receive disability benefits, and more. I’ve seen the way outdated systems can block access to vital resources and how this erodes a sense of economic empowerment and trust. I aim to work in that crucial gray space where personal narratives become data, and data reshapes policy.
A single datum represents an entire person—their trials, successes, fears, and dreams. We access the real power behind data when we study multiple perspectives to gain a well-rounded understanding of an issue. By embracing complexity instead of rounding out the edges of difficult problems, we can craft policies that are both evidence-based and deeply human.
We have the ability to ensure everyone has safe and comfortable housing, supportive community, fresh foods, and clean water. I’m incredibly grateful to work with the team at Scioto Analysis to provide the most comprehensive, informed information possible to policymakers.