Samantha Balbier

Samantha became the Director of the Institute of Politics (IOP) and the Elsie Hillman Civic Forum in early 2019. Since then, the IOP policy team has taken on a range of regional issues by engaging with leading researchers, civic leaders, and elected officials to develop innovative public policy recommendations related to equity in dual enrollment and pre-apprenticeship programs, factors related to municipal resiliency, flexibility within the K-12 education system, criminal justice reform, family caregiving, and policy levers that support lead safe demolition in the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. In her role as Director of the Elsie Hillman Civic Forum, she instructs the Elsie Honors Scholars program, works with the IOP’s student programming team to serve over 1,000 students and over 60 community partners and elected officials annually in an array of civic and community engagement programming. She created and launched the university’s All Angles program, offering Pitt students an opportunity to learn about and discuss critical societal issues from prominent national experts representing divergent political perspectives. Balbier is a member of the university’s steering committee for the Year of Discourse and Dialogue and is a recipient of the Pittsburgh Business Times 2024 Women of Influence award.

Prior to joining the IOP, she worked on a range of public policy issues facing the nonprofit sector as the Executive Director of the Forbes Funds’ Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership (GPNP), a coalition of over 450 organizations from Southwestern Pennsylvania. There, she worked with regional leaders to advocate on behalf of the sector to address federal and state issues such as charitable tax status, healthcare reform, overtime rules, tax reform, behavioral health, and state performance-based budgeting. She has a breadth of knowledge in issue-based policy, especially in the fields of pediatric environmental health, green building design, early childhood education, and human services. Over the past twenty-five years, she has filled a range of roles including working in philanthropy as program staff at the Heinz Endowments, as an Executive Director of an environmental health nonprofit, and as a special consultant to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning, where she launched a statewide initiative that engaged five state departments. 

Her policy analysis and program development activities reflect the importance of strategically engaging content experts with elected and government officials and have resulted in Pennsylvania being awarded the Excellence in Environmental Protection of Children from the Children’s Environmental Health Network in 2014, as well as the Innovation in Education Award for the 2016 GPNP Behavioral Health Public Policy Cohort awarded by Mental Health America. 

Samantha holds Bachelor’s degrees in Business and Social Work from Mercyhurst University. She received her Master’s in Social Work with an emphasis in public policy and community organizing from Pitt in 1998. Samantha received the Outstanding Alumni Award from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work in 2018. She is incredibly grateful to the University and her former graduate school advisor, the late Dr. Morton Coleman, Founder of the Institute of Politics, who guided her towards this career in public policy.