Stephanie Rivera-Kumar is a City and Regional Planning PhD candidate and Fontaine Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. She works at the intersection of spatial analysis, urban economic development, and immigrant entrepreneurship, with a focus on Latinx business owners and operators in Philadelphia.

Stephanie brings more than a decade of experience in nonprofit strategy, mobility advocacy, and social impact to her research. She has managed over $50 million in federal, state, and private grants, led cross-sector partnerships, and designed initiatives that improve quality of life for diverse communities. Her work combines spatial analytics, economic development metrics, and mixed-methods research to answer practical questions about which policies and investments create more equitable urban economies.

Her dissertation examines how Latinx ethnic enclaves shape business survival and transnational ties. Using GIS, survey data, interviews, and participatory mapping, she develops community-informed definitions of enclaves and tests how different geographies change what we see in the data. This mixed-methods approach produces tools that community partners, planners, and policymakers can use to better target support to business corridors.

At Penn, Stephanie has held research and teaching roles across multiple programs. She has worked with the National Education Opportunity Network (formerly the National Education Equity Lab), Center for Guaranteed Income Research, and the Center for Social Impact Strategy, and has taught in the Nonprofit Leadership and Master of Science in Social Policy programs. Her previous roles include leadership positions in bicycle advocacy and immigration policy coalitions.

Stephanie’s work has been supported by the Penn Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration, the Penn Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, and the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She has received recognition, including induction into the Penn School of Social Policy and Practice Hall of Fame, AL DÍA 40 Under Forty, and a Greater Philadelphia Social Innovations Awards finalist honor.

Across roles, she is most interested in projects that combine data, storytelling, and community partnership to design more just and resilient cities.

From Practice to PhD

Before starting my doctorate, I spent more than ten years working in nonprofit leadership, fundraising, and mobility advocacy. I partnered with community organizations, local government, and philanthropy to design programs, manage grants, and build coalitions around a number of issues affecting communities.

Over time, I was drawn to three questions: 

• Why do some business corridors thrive while others struggle, even when they sit in the same city and policy environment? 

• How do immigrant entrepreneurs use social networks and neighborhood institutions to survive shocks and create opportunity?

• How can data and mapping be used in ways that actually reflect community experience, rather than overwrite it?

I pursued a PhD to answer these questions with better tools. My current work combines spatial analysis, surveys, interviews, and participatory mapping to generate evidence that is rigorous, grounded in lived experience, and immediately useful to community partners and decision-makers. I see my role as a bridge between research, practice, and policy.

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