Anthony Barrows

Anthony Barrows is Managing Partner and Founder of the Center for Behavioral Design and Social Justice at Project Evident. Prior to this role, Anthony served at ideas42, an applied behavioral science firm, Anthony Barrows focuses on domestic poverty, local government, post-secondary education, and civic engagement. Barrows previously worked over ten years in child welfare, spanning positions in direct service, supervision, training, advocacy, project management, and system improvement. He is also a practicing artist and has led art classes and arts-oriented youth development programming. Anthony holds a BA in Philosophy and Art from UMass Boston, an MFA in Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Gleitsman Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership.

My Truth

Having spent the bulk of my career in human services and child welfare, I know the deep need for effective programs, but I also know that many of those programs simply don’t work as well as they could. Applied behavioral science offers some answers to that issue. Using behavioral insights, we can improve outcomes for people by accounting for the quirks of human cognition: everything from implicit bias, to limited attention, to loss aversion, to stereotype threat can have deep impacts on how (or whether) people get the things they need.