Biography
Lionel Foster left the Urban Institute in January 2021.
Lionel Foster is director of communications for the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Before joining Urban, Foster was special assistant to the director of the Baltimore City Department of Planning and an opinion columnist with Baltimore City Paper and the Baltimore Sun. He founded the Baldwin Prize, a scholarship and essay competition for students at Baltimore City College High School that uses the literary arts to help young people learn how they want to show up in the world. For his work on behalf of urban communities, he was named a Maryland Daily Record 2011 VIP.
An alumnus of Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program (BA), Foster earned master’s degrees in social policy and planning and regional and urban planning studies at the London School of Economics, as well as a master’s degree in creative and life writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, during his tenure as a British Marshall Scholar.
