Margery Turner is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, focusing on strategies for advancing economic mobility and racial equity in the US. She previously served 10 years as Urban's senior vice president for program planning and management and 11 years as director of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy, housing, and neighborhoods, Turner has analyzed issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination, and segregation, and the role public policies can play in reversing the nation‚ the legacy of separate and unequal neighborhoods. Among her publications are the books Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation; Opportunities Denied, Opportunities Diminished: Racial Discrimination in Hiring; and Urban Housing in the 1980s: Markets and Policies.

Turner served as deputy assistant secretary for research at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1993 through 1996, focusing HUD's research agenda on the problems of racial discrimination, concentrated poverty, and economic opportunity in America's metropolitan areas. During her tenure, HUD's research office launched three major social science demonstration projects, including the influential Moving to Opportunity demonstration, testing different strategies for helping families from disinvested neighborhoods gain access to opportunities through housing choice, employment supports, and education.