Nearly a decade ago, the Gates Foundation launched the Economic Mobility and Opportunity (EMO) strategy to help remove the barriers that prevent millions of people in poverty from moving up the economic ladder. Focused on 44 million Americans whose incomes are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (an annual income of $30,120 for an individual and $62,400 for a family of four), EMO collaborates with organizations and institutions across sectors to help our country’s economic system perform better, creating opportunities for everyone to succeed.
In this interview, JP Julien, a partner in McKinsey’s Philadelphia office and leader in McKinsey’s Public and Social Sector Practices, speaks with Ryan Rippel, EMO’s founding director, about the Gates Foundation’s goal of increasing mobility from poverty in the United States. Rippel discusses the ongoing economic inequality that inspired the launch of EMO as well as the innovative partners and programs that are creating new tools to improve equitable access and unlock funding for those most in need. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
JP Julien: You lead the Economic Mobility and Opportunity strategy at the Gates Foundation, affectionately known as EMO. What was the thinking behind EMO? What were you hoping to achieve?
Ryan Rippel: The Gates Foundation has been around for 25 years, and its priority in the US has always been on education. We know education is one of the single-most important things for achieving economic mobility—but we also know it’s not enough.
Ten years ago, the country was still climbing out of the Great Recession. We had a lot of questions about why things were persistently difficult and unequal for so many people in this country, and we decided to look into it. Bill and Melinda Gates committed to creating the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, a group of 24 experts and advocates from around the country who agreed to work and learn together for two years to try to answer this question: What would it take to dramatically increase mobility from poverty in the US?
We decided to make all the findings public because we knew they could be helpful to others working to improve economic mobility in this country. We spoke to hundreds of families and individuals in 36 locations and arrived at a three-part definition of mobility that’s still our anchor today. Mobility is about economic success—wealth and income—but it’s also about power and autonomy in daily life. And it’s about belonging—a sense of being valued and engaged in a community where you belong.
We used that to build EMO’s strategy for making grants and launched it in 2018 with $160 million over four years. In 2022, the Gates Foundation expanded this work with an additional $460 million to support initiatives through 2026 in finding ways to help everyone move up the economic ladder.
JP Julien: That definition is so powerful. It combines the economic reality with the idea of autonomy and belonging, which are sometimes less understood but are important for truly being able to reach your full potential.
Ryan Rippel: Absolutely. It was profound to talk to individuals and families around the country and hear them describe what economic mobility is and could be for them. It is a sense of momentum. It isn’t just about being able to pay your bills or afford an emergency—those things are important—but it is also about how your voice is heard, whether you feel connected to other people, and whether you have a sense of the future and the agency to be successful in it.
All of those things are more complicated than money alone. That’s been a big inspiration for us, and we’ve organized our work to make sure we’re also prioritizing those parts of the economic mobility experience.
JP Julien: What kinds of work does EMO support? What are you excited about in particular?
Ryan Rippel: Our work centers on a “who,” and our “who” is the 44 million Americans at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Many of them are in what we would consider poverty or deep poverty, while others are above the poverty line but at risk of falling below it. And all of them feel a sense of vulnerability and precariousness in daily life.
Our focus has been on three things. One, economic mobility is a long-term game. It’s a generational measure: Will you do better than your parents? But there are things we need to do now to help people have the economic security and stability that make mobility even possible.
The first pillar of our strategy is called “making lives better now.” The goal is to focus on critical forks in the road—things that people are up against every day, where getting the resources they need would help them get through the weeks and months and ultimately get on a path to greater opportunity. They’re things like accessing safety net benefits, finding a job, navigating complex government systems—a whole range of things.
JP Julien: All the complicated stuff that we deal with to make our lives happen.
Ryan Rippel: Right. Then the second pillar is around key decision-makers who have a lot to do with the lives of our focus population, those 44 million Americans. We focus on two decision-makers in particular: small and medium-sized businesses, which are the primary employers of those 44 million Americans—66 percent of them work for or are connected to a small or medium-size business. The other is local government leaders and decision-makers who sit across so many systems that shape what daily life looks and feels like for our focus population.
Finally, the third pillar of our strategy is about bringing the field together: how we get more funders and national and local organizations to work together, set big goals, move an economic mobility agenda forward, and make a lasting and sustainable difference to economic mobility in the country.
Understanding economic mobility
JP Julien: Let’s talk about the research you supported on mobility experiences that came out in March 2024.1 The research talks about 28 life experiences that have a disproportionate impact on economic mobility. What is a mobility experience, and why does it matter?
Ryan Rippel: You can look at economic mobility through lots of different lenses. You can look at it through place; you can look at it through a particular issue, such as housing or the justice system. All of those are important, and everyone doing work in those areas is critical to the overall effort.
It’s also interesting to look at it from the perspective of a human life. What plays out from birth through adulthood, and what systems do you encounter? More important, what are the forks in the road where things could go one way or another? And what do you need in that moment for things to get better?
The mobility experiences are 28 critical forks in the road in people’s lives, where their trajectory is very much on the line.2 Am I going to go forward, or am I going to be stuck—or face even greater vulnerability?
JP Julien: Did anything surprise you about what you found relating to those 28 experiences?
Ryan Rippel: What’s important about this research is it’s not just academic work. We looked at 230 studies to understand what the data says about the moments that are really critical, but we also did a national survey of 4,000 Americans, focusing on the population of 44 million Americans facing these challenges.
Their perspective on those critical moments was very important in getting the whole story. It’s not just what the evidence says; it’s also what lived experience affirms and reflects about those moments and how consequential they can be. This is a story of what people are saying about their own lives and what has mattered day by day and year by year. That’s what makes it so powerful.
Some of these moments are not surprising: getting a postsecondary credential, getting a credential with labor market value so there’s a job waiting for you, and getting that first job. The evidence and the lived experience agree that all of those are profound for a person’s trajectory.
But there are also some interesting things in here that cause us to take a step back. One, people who have experienced poverty have a different perspective than the general public about what moments matter most. Also, these mobility experiences tell a story of just how personal these challenges and barriers can be in a person’s life.
If you have experienced food insecurity, housing insecurity, or the fragility of not being able to come up with an emergency payment or having childcare, you know that in the moment, it can feel impossible. In this work, we see just how deeply affecting these barriers are in people’s lives.
JP Julien: I loved that part of the report. It was not just great facts and economic data and academic data points but also actually hearing the lived experience of the people you serve. I’m curious about that design choice. Why did you think that was an important part of the research? Is it something that you hope the field does more of?
Ryan Rippel: Absolutely. It was a fundamental decision to do it. And we feel deeply accountable to lived experience and to making sure that people’s actual experiences day in and day out inform everything that we do—that we’re not building things for an academic purpose or a research report or an abstract thing. We’re actually trying to find out what matters most every day and focus our resources, attention, and convening power around those challenges.
It’s the first of many instances in which this will be important to our work. And we hope that’s true for our peers and others in the field, many of whom have been engaging with lived experience and have been doing this kind of work for some time. But it is so important to ask those fundamental questions: Where does this meet daily life, and where is it relevant and potentially powerful? That’s what we should be focused on.
JP Julien: You mentioned that the purpose of this report is not just to provide information but also to prompt action. What do you hope other public sector or private sector leaders glean from the report and take action against?
Ryan Rippel: We have the evidence now about what the moment is, and we have the perspective from lived experience of how important it can be in daily life. Now we need to map resources to it. Are these moments getting enough resources? Are there moments that we know are highly consequential?
There are also things that people say they need and want in those moments. Are we resourcing them? Are we putting our policy weight behind them? Are we doing all we can to actually solve for those moments? That, I think, is the next step, and we’re doing the work now to map those flows and understand where public and private dollars are against those challenges.
At the same time, it’s exciting to look at what’s possible now—even before we have that information—thanks to innovators who are working on some of these challenges. It used to be that to find out the balance on your food stamp card, you had to call a 1-800 number. Now, a very successful entrepreneur has built a set of products to help you find that out in real time and connect you to a whole range of financial services and products.
Things like that are cutting through processes that used to be, or still are, overly complex and bureaucratic so we can help people get what they need in the moment that can make a difference for them right now.
JP Julien: How do you think your research findings will shape EMO’s future?
Ryan Rippel: The findings provide a road map for how we approach the future. We want to think about moments and how moments are shaped in daily life and provide resources to be sure we’re solving key problems. In our view, that is how we’re going to play the best role: by building the ladder up with others in the field who are also doing this work.
Navigating life experiences
JP Julien: Everyone has these life experiences. From a more personal perspective, did any of those life experiences resonate with you or shape your path to the foundation?
Ryan Rippel: Absolutely, and we talk a lot about this on the economic mobility team and in the Gates Foundation. We all come to this work with a “why”—there is a person in our own lives, our family, someone we are close to, who has faced one of these moments and has felt like everything is on the line.
For me, it was my mom. My dad died in a car accident when I was three years old. My parents owned a sporting goods store, and his death put everything up in the air. My mom raised my sister and me as a single parent through enormous challenges in just getting through daily life.
I remember a lot of those moments: moments when she was on the phone with the IRS or was fighting to get something for me at school or to find childcare so she could work. Ultimately, she didn’t have all that she needed. She called me one day in 2007 and told me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. But the whole story was that she didn’t have health insurance and never had access to a doctor. She found a lump in her breast and waited 11 months before she was able to get to a doctor. At that point, it had spread everywhere.
My mom lived another few months, and I lost one of the strongest, most powerful forces in my life. And I learned so much about systems like healthcare in this country—when someone’s life is on the line, what you have to go through day in and day out just to understand the process, let alone figure out how to pay for something.
Everything we do every day is putting us in touch with people navigating those challenges. And it’s a profoundly difficult life for a lot of people in this country. One of the statistics that motivates us and keeps us going every day is that in 1940, the decade in which my parents were born, the chances they would earn more than their parents were more than 90 percent. And for those born in the 1980s, my generation, the chances we would do better than our parents are 50 percent. The economic escalator for so many has been going down for generations in this country, and we have to come together to reverse that course.
JP Julien: Thank you for sharing that. It really resonates. I lost my mom in 2012 to cancer as well. Even if you’re well-resourced and you’ve gone to college—I was a healthcare major—trying to navigate insurance, the hospital, and a range of providers demonstrated just how challenging it is for someone who, on paper, should be able to do this quite easily, let alone people who are working really hard and struggling to make ends meet.
Ryan Rippel: I appreciate you sharing that. These stories are so powerful because they also point to this other part of the definition: Those systems take away a lot of power and autonomy, and they take away a sense of belonging. At times, you can feel alone and isolated in the middle of it.
So we have to keep that front and center as we think about our work. It’s not just income—that’s important—but it’s also this other part that makes us a whole person and a person who can see the future.
JP Julien: Given that research and the work you’re doing at EMO, are you optimistic about the future?
Ryan Rippel: I’m very optimistic. All you have to do is travel around the country to meet people who are pushing through these challenges every day. There are people doing incredible work in their neighborhoods and in their communities, and it matters. Sometimes we think if something is not in the national news, it may not register. But did you know that the half-mile radius around a kid’s house has the most to do with their long-term trajectory? So it matters what you do in the neighborhood associations you’re building, the battles you’re waging, and your school board. All of these things are critical for this journey. Seeing people take that on in a deeply personal way and in a local way is inspiring.
Also, working with innovators who are taking private sector expertise and bringing it to public problems—who are creating new tools and products to get ten-month processes down to ten minutes so people can get what they need today—is so inspiring. At the beginning of the pandemic, we were part of a group of funders that supported Code for America in creating GetYourRefund.org, a free platform that helps families file for valuable tax credits and get those tax credits through their tax returns.
That has had enormous reach, and programs like it have been able to unlock more than $2 billion for more than a million families around the country in a way that affirms power, autonomy, and dignity, which is very exciting to see. So I’m extremely hopeful.
JP Julien: And that’s so powerful because it’s dollars that they otherwise would have trouble capturing but that are owed to them.
Ryan Rippel: They are eligible. They qualify. But the process itself is often so burdensome that the effort, time, and resources you have to deploy to get through it are more than you can bear. That tool helps address that gap.
Developing equitable tools
JP Julien: With the advancement of AI and other technologies, it seems like there will be more and more use cases that will help simplify that process and make it easier for folks to access opportunity. I’m curious as to how you’re seeing that future emerge in light of the work you’re doing.
Ryan Rippel: There are enormous opportunities, especially if we can create the right incentives and parameters for folks to develop these tools in fair, equitable, and responsible ways. With our focus population of 44 million Americans in mind, imagine that an agent or a guide could not only help you get the support you know about but also recommend other things you may be eligible for but didn’t know about. That would be really powerful—but it’s not going to happen by accident. We’re going to have to focus, as a set of funders, on a larger movement around what it means to develop those tools in a fair, equitable, and responsible way for the folks who stand to benefit the most from being able to use them.
We also have to be conscious about trust. This is still very much a human challenge, and we need social workers, navigators, and people who, in those critical moments, have all the tools available to them to reach our focus population of 44 million Americans. It’s through those human relationships that we’re also going to build trust for some of these other tools that can cut through long processes and help unlock resources.
JP Julien: Is there anything that we didn’t touch on in the report or what EMO is doing that you want to mention?
Ryan Rippel: We are so grateful to be part of the larger community of funders working on these questions and working together in even more collaborative ways. That’s what it’s going to take to move this forward: We’re going to have to set some bigger goals and really put our resources together to push on some very hard, intractable challenges within these systems—and to do so in a way that responds to an actual lived experience today.
A few years ago, I was giving a presentation to a conference of librarians about some new data that had come out on economic mobility, and someone stood up in the back of the auditorium and shouted at me, “I just need a tank of gas.” That had a very profound effect on me. My first thought was, “I don’t work at a place where I can get you a tank of gas.” But then I took a step back and realized there are incredible things that we can do to meet the moment. We should be paying attention to what people need today, right now, and I’m excited about that. The economic mobility work at the Gates Foundation is taking a hard look at that, as well as playing a long game of how we sustain it over time.
JP Julien: Economic mobility is a generational goal, but there are things that we can do to make people’s lives better now.
Ryan Rippel: Exactly. And we need more leaders to come into this space and advance this cause. This is the issue of our lifetime, and we need everybody working on it in some form. It is not a public problem or a private problem alone. It is a challenge for all of us to be involved in and to try to solve.
