Regina M. Lewis, PhD is a researcher, strategist, storyteller, and community-centered problem solver who believes that the most meaningful change happens when we bring people, ideas, and lived experience into the same room.

Her work sits at the intersection of systems, policy, place, and story. She is deeply curious about the ways institutions and policies shape people’s everyday lives, particularly around housing, wealth, education, and opportunity. But she is equally interested in what happens when communities have the space, resources, and tools to tell their own stories and imagine something different.

Through her work with Black Yarn, a Lexington-based nonprofit using research and storytelling to confront systemic harms and amplify Black experiences, Regina helps turn complex research into stories that people can see themselves in and use to create change. Her work has contributed to projects exploring housing, wealth, neighborhood change, and the lasting effects of racialized policy, including the award-nominated documentary, Lexington: Resilience in the Redline. She believes research should help communities ask better questions, understand what is happening around them, and build toward something better.

Through her consulting firm, Chiseled Hope LLC, Regina brings that same approach to organizations, institutions, and community initiatives. She partners with people who are trying to make meaningful change, helping them make sense of complex problems, connect the dots across systems, strengthen their strategies, and move ideas from vision to action. Her work often lives in the space between research and practice, where good questions become useful knowledge and useful knowledge becomes collective action.

Regina’s scholarship examines how policy distributes risk and opportunity unevenly across communities. Her research has been presented at national and regional venues including the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), the National Academy of Public Administration’s Social Equity Leadership Conference, and the Kentucky Law Journal Symposium. She earned her PhD from the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, where her research explored the systems that shape opportunity and inequality.

Across all of her work, Regina brings a systems lens, a storyteller’s heart, and a deep belief in the wisdom that already exists within communities.

She is also a certified financial coach, guest lecturer, and nationally competitive amateur Strongwoman athlete. She is a lifelong learner, a gratitude enthusiast, and someone who believes transformation rarely happens alone.

Community is our Superpower.