Lígia is the Director of the Centre for Homelessness Impact. She is responsible for the leadership and management of the new organisation and also delivered the feasibility study which preceded the setting up of the new Centre. Lígia was previously Head of Research and Evaluation at Crisis, where over a period of nine years she led the organisation's evidence programme - growing its scale and impact so that it's now one of the largest and most influential in the UK and internationally. She joined the charity in March 2008 following stints at the Young Foundation and the Refugee Council. Lígia was awarded a PhD from the Government Department of the London School of Economics in 2007. She has also worked in research roles for Professor David Held, founder of Polity Press, for sociologist Professor Helmut Anheier, who founded and directed the LSE’s Centre for Civil Society, and for the International Labour Organisation where she covered issues including human trafficking, child labour and women’s rights. Lígia is a 2016 Clore Fellow, having been awarded the Specialist Fellowship on Housing and Homelessness, funded by the Oak Foundation.

Mary Osborn has worked in community services assisting with the development of an evidence-based outcomes framework approach. The approach required a shift in thinking from service outputs to service-user outcomes, developing an outcome model, a desktop review of evidence, and a set of potential indicators for measuring change in wellbeing.