Jody L. Herman, PhD
Reid Rasmussen Senior Scholar of Public Policy, Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law
Jody L. Herman, PhD, is the Reid Rasmussen Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Her scholarship has helped advance equity for the LGBTQ population by focusing on gender identity in survey research and the prevalence and impact of discrimination based on gender identity or expression.
Herman is a co-investigator on the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey (TransPop), a nationally representative survey of transgender adults, and co-principal investigator for the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey of transgender adults conducted in the United States to date.
Her published research is routinely cited by major news sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NPR. She was also a co-author on the groundbreaking report "Injustice at Every Turn," based on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Herman serves as co-chair of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Working Group for the 2023–2024 and 2025–2026 cycles. She was a member of that group for the 2021–2022 cycle and previously served on the CHIS Adult Technical Advisory Committee for the 2017–2018 and 2019–2020 cycles.
“UCLA CHPR has been an invaluable and key partner with the Williams Institute in advancing our knowledge about gender identity and sexual orientation measures for surveys. In 2014, the team at CHIS and the Williams Institute worked together to test measures for gender identity that would help create representative data about transgender Californians,” says Herman. “The work we did back then would set the stage for further evidence-based refinement of these measures over the years and would help inform and support efforts to expand gender identity data collection at the federal level. This work is ongoing, and CHPR and CHIS can be incredibly proud of their efforts in advancing trans health research, not only in California, but nationally.”