Laurie Goodman is an Institute fellow and the founder of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. The center provides policymakers data-driven analyses of housing finance policy issues they can depend on for relevance, accuracy, and independence. Before joining Urban, Goodman spent 30 years as an analyst and research department manager at several Wall Street firms. From 2008 to 2013, she was a senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group LP, a boutique broker-dealer specializing in securitized products, where her strategy effort became known for its analysis of housing policy issues. From 1993 to 2008, Goodman was head of global fixed income research and manager of US securitized products research at UBS and predecessor firms, which were ranked first by Institutional Investor for 11 straight years. Before that, she held research and portfolio management positions at several Wall Street firms. She began her career as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Goodman was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Hall of Fame in 2009.

Goodman serves on the board of directors of MFA Financial and Arch Capital Group Ltd. and is a consultant to the Amherst Group. Goodman has published more than 200 journal articles and has coauthored and coedited five books. She has a BA in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and an AM and PhD in economics from Stanford University.