Marta Tienda is Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies, Professor of Sociology, Emerita, and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she directed the Office of Population Research from 1997 until 2002 and was co-founding director of the university’s Program in Latino Studies from 2009 to 2018. She has held appointments at the University of Chicago, where she served as Chair of Sociology; the University of Wisconsin; and Stanford University (as visiting professor). Dr. Tienda is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is past president of the Population Association of America. Her research interests include ethnic and racial stratification, poverty and social policy, and the sociology of employment and labor markets. She has studied immigration, population diversification, and concentrated poverty, documenting how social arrangements and life course trajectories both perpetuate and reshape socioeconomic inequality.
Dr. Tienda is the author, coauthor, or editor of numerous articles and books, including Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies (2006), Hispanics and the Future of America (2006), Africa on the Move (2006), Ethnicity and Causal Mechanisms (2005), Youth in Cities (2002), The Color of Opportunity: Families, Welfare and Work in the Inner City (2001), Divided Opportunities: Minorities, Poverty, and Social Policy (1988), The Hispanic Population of the United States (1987), and Hispanics in the U.S. Economy (1985).
Her awards and honors include: American Dream Legacy Award; AAUW’s Outstanding Scholar Award; fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies (Tel Aviv, Israel), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; and a Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship.
Currently Dr. Tienda serves as an independent trustee of the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association (TIAA), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation of Switzerland, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Urban Institute, and Urban Institute, and the Holdsworth Center. Previously she served on the boards of Brown University, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the W.T. Grant Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Princeton Medical Center.
Dr. Tienda received a B.A. in Spanish Literature from Michigan State University (Honors College) (1972) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Texas at Austin (1977).
