Fenaba Rena Addo

Associate Professor of Public Policy
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Fenaba Rena Addo, PhD is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, where she is also an adjunct associate professor of sociology and African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and a faculty affiliate of the Carolina Population Center. Her research program examines the causes and consequences of debt and wealth inequality with a focus on higher education and family and relationships. She recently coauthored with sociologist Jason Houle, A Dream Defaulted: The Student Debt Crisis Among Black Borrowers (Harvard Education Press, 2022) that centers the stories of black young adults within the broader student loan debt landscape and addresses policy solutions which can address racial disparities in student loan debt. She received her Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University, holds a B.S. in Economics from Duke University, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Postdoctoral Scholar.