Blair has over 10 years of experience in leading research to understand and address obstacles in service delivery in government agencies and humanitarian organizations, particularly focusing on refugee populations. She has led large projects evaluating how policies and programs shape access to resources and economic security for refugee families, designing and implementing research strategies and developing evidence-based recommendations. She is first author of the book We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America (University of California Press), with Annette Lareau, which reveals the obstacles that resettled refugees face in accessing social services and economic resources in the United States. As the principal investigator, she also led a study on the barriers to economic development in a context of protracted humanitarian crises in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. She has taught courses and led workshops on global migration policy and on social inequality at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship and U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships and covered by media outlets, including NPR’s Planet Money.

She completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Urban Studies and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.