WorldPride Washington, D.C. Human Rights Conference 2025

M. V. Lee Badgett, PhD, is a pioneering researcher of the global cost of homophobia and transphobia, economic empowerment of LGBTI+ people, and LGBTI+ economic inequality. She’s the Chief Economist and co-founder of Koppa: The LGBTI+ Economic Power Lab. In addition, Badgett is Professor Emeritx of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA’s Williams Institute, where she was a co-founder and the first research director. She has worked with the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, Open For Business, UNDP, USAID, IDB, the U.S. State Department, OECD, global businesses, and many LGBTI+ organizations. Badgett’s work includes testifying as an expert witness (including as an expert witness in California’s Prop 8 case), analyzing public policies, consulting with development banks, briefing policymakers, writing op-ed pieces, speaking with journalists, and advising businesses. She is quoted regularly in newspapers across the country, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Curve Magazine named her one of the twenty most powerful lesbians in academia, and she has appeared on The Advocate magazine’s "Our Best and Brightest Activists" list and Out Magazine’s “Out 100.” Her latest book is The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All (Beacon Press, 2020). Badgett received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Berkeley.