Sharon Kandris

Sharon Kandris is executive director of The Polis Center at IUPUI, an applied research center with a mission to help communities become healthier and more resilient. She plays a key role in developing and promoting the strategic direction, mission and vision of the center. She also directs the center’s community informatics area, which designs solutions to meet the data and information needs of nonprofit and community-based organizations.

Kandris has more than 25 years of experience in helping organizations use data to better understand their communities and inform their decision-making. She has directed several major initiatives to integrate and analyze data about communities to understand important social issues and has directed the creation of online data dashboards, community information systems, community assessments, program planning, program evaluation and impact measurement.

She has extensive strategic development experience, including strategic planning with more than 75 local organizations and consulting with more than 20 cities across the nation on how to build a sustainable community information system. She served on the executive committee of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a 29-city collaboration led by the Urban Institute to further the development and use of neighborhood information systems in local policymaking and community building.

Kandris is a member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. She serves on the United Way of Central Indiana Community Impact Committee and is a volunteer agency evaluator.

Areas of Expertise

Community information systems, community assessments, strategic planning, data for community change, data analysis, data integration, applying geospatial technologies to analyze social issues, poverty.

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