In late 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge, a call for ideas from individuals and organizations to broaden the national conversation about poverty and economic mobility. Nazli Kibria, a professor of sociology at CAS, teamed up with Karen V. Hansen, a professor of sociology at Brandeis University, to propose the Cascading Lives Project, a website and digital learning toolkit that shares people's life stories and their experiences of downward mobility. They were one of 28 groups who received $100,000 grants for their projects.