Louisa Aviles

Louisa is a Senior Program Officer in the Joyce Foundation’s Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program. She is focused on advancing the program's mission of building safe and just communities in the Great Lakes through support for effective state-level gun policy and for the policy and practice of violence intervention.

Prior to joining the Joyce Foundation, Louisa spent more than eight years at National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC), where she worked to advance the emerging science of violence prevention through applied research with frontline public safety practitioners and close collaboration with city- and state-level policy leaders. From 2018 through 2021, she directed NNSC’s Group Violence Intervention portfolio, where she led the design and implementation of strategies to reduce violence in dozens of communities across fifteen states.

Louisa began her work in criminal justice systems as an analyst in the Office of Management Analysis and Planning in the New York City Police Department, where she supported special projects including a pilot to videorecord custodial interrogations. She later served as a policy advisor in the office of then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where she worked on the Young Men’s Initiative (YMI), an ongoing public-private investment in closing disparities in outcomes between young men of color and their White peers.

A native of New York City, Louisa received a BS in International Politics from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an MA in Criminal Justice and Advanced Certificate in Crime Prevention and Analysis from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.