Jennifer Newcomer
Principal
What we do
Who we are
Jennifer is the founder and Principal of Community Insights, LLC. She also supports the Colorado Futures Center at Colorado State University as Research Director. Her research focuses on social and built environment issues, particularly household and neighborhood lifecycles, housing affordability, household displacement, and the forces impacting family economic wellbeing. Some of her most notable work has come from the creative use of novel data sources with small area spatial analysis to lend insight to vexing social issues. Clients and partners include local and national philanthropic and nonprofit organizations in support of their investment and services, as well as local governments to inform the creation of policies that best support the most vulnerable residents.
Previously, Jennifer worked at the Piton Foundation directing the program Shift Research Lab and at the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) conducting land use forecasting and regional economic analysis. At the start of her career, she worked in real estate and construction managing projects from planning and design to build out.
Jennifer is a doctoral student in geography, planning and design at the University of Colorado Denver. She holds a master’s in urban and regional planning with a focus on economic development from the University of Colorado at Denver, and a bachelor’s in environmental design from the University of New Mexico. In addition, she retains alumni status with the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP).
Community Insights LLC’s expertise is in conducting research and deep quantitative analysis of built environment and social issues, particularly with curating large, structured data. The organization’s knowledge base is one and the same as its principal, through her almost 20 years of experience as an analyst and researcher. Prior to that, she worked in real estate development and construction, giving her additional expertise in what it takes to get projects built. Undergirding the work is her long-term history with the Colorado data community that has facilitated access to key data sources and developed best practices for data-driven decision-making. To date, she has curated a longitudinal database across key social domains (e.g. housing, education, economic, demographic), allowing for the efficient and cross-sectional analysis of questions raised by partners.
Community Insights’ research focus areas include household and neighborhood lifecycles, housing affordability, and the forces impacting family economic wellbeing. Expertise in combining these topics with small area spatial analysis, leveraging unique administrative data sources, and working closely with local partners enables Community Insights to bring the nuances across communities to life. Notable work includes curating a property-level inventory that resulted in a socioeconomic relational database positioning Community Insights as a leader in understanding profound facets of neighborhood change, including the question, “Where are people moving to?”, and provide insight into how neighborhoods may evolve over the next decade. Additionally, Community Insights’ curation of data and research into all aspects of housing has supported organizations ranging from direct service providers serving Colorado households living at the economic margin to local governments, including the naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) property database housed at the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority that is helping inform housing preservation efforts in the state.
The type of technical assistance Community Insights provides to organizations is through expertise in building their capacity to use data (internal/external) more effectively. Work has also included help distilling complicated information for non-technical audiences. This support to organizations has led to more robust and effective programming, improved understanding of impact, resource procurement, and strategic direction.
With tailored information from Community Insights, social change organizations can be more anticipatory, adaptive, and proactive in decision-making related to program delivery, outreach, policy advocacy and investments. Together with community partners, Community Insights has amassed the expertise that is uniquely suited to support local and national nonprofit organizations in their equity initiatives, as well as all levels of government in the pursuit of informing equitable policy and resource allocation.