Lucía Crivelli

Electrical Engineering student at Universidad de la República (Uruguay).
Pedagogical Assistant in Computational Thinking and Artificial Intelligence at Ceibal (Uruguay).

Angelica Cruz

Angelica is an experienced education leader with a demonstrated commitment to equity and transformative change. She brings over 20 years of experience in education, having served in a broad range of roles, including teacher, instructional coach, principal, and district administrator. She currently serves as the Director of Literacy at the Oregon Department of Education. Angelica holds a BA from Tufts University and two Master’s Degrees in Education from Arizona State University. Angelica’s work demonstrates a clear commitment to early learning, multilingual education, students who experience disabilities and ensuring teaching and learning that is culturally responsive, and student and family-centered.

LaTonya Davis

LaTonya Davis is a seasoned educational leader with extensive experience in grant and budget compliance, professional development, and building relationships to achieve outcomes. Currently serving as the Coordinator of Innovative Curriculum and Design at Fulton County Schools, she has significantly improved the programmatic structure of the district's tutoring program. Her previous roles include Secondary Science Program Specialist, Title III State Director at the South Carolina Department of Education, and Founding Director of Operations at Beacon College Prep. LaTonya holds certifications in Educational Leadership and a Specialist of Education degree from Georgia State University.

Toni DeMello

Toni has been in education for over 25 years. She has held many positions within her career in education from teacher and building administrator to curriculum & instruction developer and continuous improvement planner to most recently the manager of Equity based Multi Tiered System of Support. Her passion for improving district and school level systems and structures for the implementation of MTSS is second only to her love of ensuring schools are equipped and prepared to provide all students with access to the support, curriculum, and instruction they need to be successful.

Dora Demszky

Dora Demszky is an Assistant Professor in Education Data Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on measuring equity, representation and student-centeredness in educational texts, with the goal of providing insights to educators to improve instruction. She develops measures based on natural language processing that work well for high-dimensional, unstructured data, and she applies these measures to provide feedback to educators. Dr Demszky has received her PhD in Linguistics at Stanford.

Mark Duffy

Mark Duffy has worked in the field of education policy and practice research for two decades, focusing on both K-12 and postsecondary reform. In postsecondary education at Research for Action (RFA), Duffy has led work on both academic and non-academic student support services, developmental education reform, multiple measures placement, and contributed to research on outcomes-based funding. Prior to working at RFA, Duffy conducted research for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). Duffy received his Master of Science degree in Public Policy from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

Shaunté Duggins

Shaunté Duggins, Ph.D., is a dynamic leader with a deep commitment to advancing learning outcomes for students and family engagement through impactful initiatives at the intersection of research, policy, and practice. As Director for State Initiatives at the UF Lastinger Center for Learning, she oversees the strategic development and research efforts for both the New Worlds Reading Initiative and the Florida Tutoring Advantage. Dr. Duggins is responsible for streamlined operations and managing partnerships across policy, business, and philanthropy to foster positive impacts for children, families, and educators statewide.

Elizabeth Epstein

Ph.D. Candidate

John Failla

John Failla is the CEO and Founder of Pearl, a leading research-based, tutoring ecosystem. Inspired by his experience as a struggling student and the positive impact created by his high-school tutor, John built the proprietary Pearl platform in 2019 to help his tutoring company scale, while keeping relationships at the core. Pearl prioritizes relationships by uniting teaching with technology, helping relationship-based educators and students achieve meaningful and measurable success. Pearl is the platform provider behind many of the nation's largest community-based, tutoring initiatives including Arkansas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Virginia, with the Ecosystem bringing together the most progressive and respected education organizations including the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.

Mingyu Feng

Mingyu Feng, Ph.D., is a Research Director of Learning and Technology from WestEd. She has conducted extensive research focusing on using computing technologies to improve student learning. Dr. Feng has 20 years of experience in research and has led multiple complex, multi-institutional projects. She currently serves as PI/co-PI on several large-scale grants that investigate the implementation and efficacy of digital interventions in elementary and middle schools, including a study that examines the effects of high dosage human tutoring. Feng has a PhD in Computer Science.

John Fensterwald

Editor-at-large, EdSource, an education news site in California.

Courtney Firle

Courtney Firle has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Spelman College and a Master of Art in Teaching with a focus in 5th through 9th grade mathematics from Relay GSE. Formally, she taught 5th and 6th-grade math and has been an instructional coach in various capacities. Currently, she is the Match Corp Tutor Director at Match Middle School in Jamaica Plain, MA. The Match Corp is a special group of Educational Ambassadors (Tutors) that provide tutoring services to students as a built-in portion of their schedule.

Meredith Fortner

Meredith Fortner is the Executive Director of EduTutorVA, a fast-growing virtual tutoring nonprofit in Virginia. EduTutorVA pairs third-eighth grade students in Title 1 schools with college tutors from 14 Virginia colleges and universities for year-long math or reading tutoring during the instructional day or in after-school programs.

Heather Francis

Dr. Heather Francis is the Executive Director of Academics for the Cambridge Public Schools, where she oversees curriculum and instruction, advanced learning, Title I programming, out-of-school-time programs, McKinney-Vento supports, and school partnerships. Dr. Francis designed and implemented the Excel Tutoring program in Cambridge, a high-impact tutoring program that serves students in grades 3-8 at all elementary and upper schools in the district.

Rinat Fried

Rinat provide data support for elementary schools, focusing on literacy assessments.

Kristine Gaffaney

Kristine currently serves as the Director of Operations & Finance of the SCALE Initiative, which encompasses the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education. Before rejoining Stanford, she held the position of Chief of Staff and was an assistant to Dr. Susanna Loeb at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. Throughout her career, Kristine has dedicated herself to the field of Early Childhood Education, including a seven-year tenure at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

Sofía García Cabeza

Sofía García is the Head of In-Service Teachers Training at Ceibal. She holds a degree in Communication Sciences and a Master’s in Technology-Mediated Educational Processes. She coordinated the Master's programs in Education, Innovation, and Inclusive Education at FLACSO Uruguay, and lectured in various postgraduate courses. Sofía also served as ICT coordinator at UTEC and worked as Head of Operations in a medical education company. She has advised the Pan American Health Organization and participated in multiple research projects, publications, and conferences on education and technology.

Sara Geliebter

As the Manager of Tutoring and Grants at the San Francisco Education Fund, Sara and her team collaborate with partner tutor programs to support program implementation, student participation and family engagement. Since 2021, the SF Ed Fund has provided high-impact literacy tutoring to over 6,300 students in SFUSD who stand to make the most gains.

Julie George

Julie George serves as the Research, Practice & Strategy Consultant for Tutoring Solutions at Kelly Education. She possesses over 20 years of experience in teacher training, teaching—particularly in ESOL/Applied Linguistics and writing classrooms—and administration in higher education and non-profits settings. Julie ensures our approach aligns with the growing body of tutoring research and collaborates with our dedicated team and state and local partners to design and implement high-impact programs that cater to all learners, using best practices grounded in academic study.

Alejandro Gibes de Gac

Alejandro Gibes de Gac, a Harvard graduate and founder of Springboard Collaborative, aims to close the literacy gap. He co-founded Paloma, an AI-driven edtech startup empowering parents as educators. Paloma's web app fosters daily 15-minute tutoring sessions at home, boosting students' learning. With a decade of experience, Alejandro advocates for parent-teacher collaboration to bridge educational disparities.

Ev Gilbert

Ev Gilbert (they/he) is a Research Assistant for the National Student Support Accelerator. They are a Master’s student at the Stanford Graduate School of Education in the Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies Program and hold a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Boston University. Ev is passionate about educational equity and the role of student voice in bringing about change in local and statewide school policy.

Emily Glasgow

For the past 27 years, Dr. Emily Glasgow has served and led public schools and systems in California, Massachusetts, and Oregon. Dr. Glasgow spent 13 years as a PK-8 principal and has overseen system transformation in the Portland Public Schools for the past six years. She is currently responsible for leading district-wide early childhood programming, early literacy transformation, elementary teaching and learning, summer acceleration, high impact tutoring, and K-12 Talented and Gifted programs. Dr. Glasgow holds a masters in school leadership from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a doctorate in school leadership from Lewis & Clark University.

Cristina Barnard Gonzalez

Cristina Barnard Gonzalez is a Research Associate at the National Student Support Accelerator. She is passionate about social and emotional learning, behavioral dynamics, and educational equity. Cristina is pursuing an M.A. in International Education Policy Analysis at Stanford and holds a B.A. in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico (ITAM). Prior to joining the NSSA team, Cristina worked as a consultant for the World Bank.

David Gormley

David Gormley is a student studying data science and social policy at Northwestern University and a proud member of the NSSA team. He is passionate about bringing ethical AI methods to education research and hopes to be a teacher in the future. With the NSSA, David uses natural language processing methods to analyze transcriptions of online high-impact tutoring data. Outside of the lab, he loves learning languages, cooking, and swimming.

Leiah Groom-Thomas

Leiah Groom-Thomas is a Social Science Researcher III at Stanford University. Her interests include early childhood education, implementing and scaling interventions in complex systems, and conducting translational research to enact change in practice and policy. Her recent research employs mixed methods to inform national efforts on implementing and sustaining high-impact tutoring to accelerate student learning.

Shivang Gupta

Shivang Gupta is the Product Lead for Personalized Learning Squared at Carnegie Mellon University, an award-winning product funded by leading organizations that is doubling the rate of math learning for middle school students. He is a graduate of the Masters in Education Technology program at Carnegie Mellon, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Shivang has vast experience working in the education technology industry across Hong Kong, India, Estonia, and the US and previously led development teams (VR, Reporting and AI) at DDI in Pittsburgh, a global leader in employee training, and at First Code Academy in Hong Kong, one of the fastest growing edtech startups in the last decade in Hong Kong. Shivang has also worked with HMH, one of the world's leading publishing houses to develop effective language learning software.

Steve Hall

Steve Hall serves as the Executive Director of ALP-Charlotte, a nonprofit delivering one-on-one, evidence-based literacy tutoring to students in Title 1 Schools. Under his leadership, ALP has undergone a bold transformation to scale its impact, integrating technology to increase efficiency and expand access. With a background in engineering and operations, Steve brings a unique lens to high-dosage tutoring, blending strategy, storytelling, and systems thinking to advance early literacy at scale.

Jamie Halper

Jamie Halper is an IC member of Blue Owl Strategic Equity and a Senior Advisor to Blue Owl Capital. He's a former Partner at Leonard Green & Partners and has worked in private equity/credit for 34 yrs. He is a Co-founder/Chair of Step Up Tutoring, a Stanford Institute for HAI Advisory Council member, served on Stanford's Board of Trustees, chaired the Finance Committee, and served on the Board of Stanford Management Company and the Haas Advisory Board. He has an AB in Economics from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. He and Priscilla have four children and live in LA.

Kara Hamilton

Kara has dedicated her career to supporting and advancing educational excellence. She previously served at the North Carolina Association of School Administrators, where she played a key role in advocacy, communication, and professional development for the state's visionary educational leaders. Now, in her role as Tutorial Programming Director with Guilford County Schools, she leads efforts around high-dosage tutoring program implementation, working to ensure students receive the targeted support they need to thrive academically.

Erin Hashimoto-Martell

Erin Hashimoto-Martell, Ph.D. is the Associate Commissioner of Instructional Support at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, where she oversees the policies and programs of curriculum and instruction, educator preparation, and educator development to increase equity in access related to the effective teaching and learning while improving learning outcomes for all.​ Previously, Dr. Hashimoto-Martell spent over a decade in the Boston Public Schools as a teacher, coach, and director of instruction. She earned her B.S. in Ecology from the University of California, San Diego, and her M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College.

Bryan Hassel

Bryan Hassel is Co-President of Public Impact. He co-leads the national Opportunity Culture® initiative, reaching 200,000 students in 2024-25 with new school designs in which excellent teachers earn higher pay to lead small teams toward instructional excellence, including abundant small group tutoring. Hassel is a recognized expert on charter school excellence, school choice, and teacher and principal effectiveness. His work has appeared in Education Next, Education Week, and numerous other publications. He authored The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise, published by Brookings Institution Press. Hassel received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.

Toni Hicks

Toni Hicks is an educator with 9 years of experience, currently serving as a Multi-Classroom Leader for second grade. Passionate about teaching, Toni views it as a dream career and is a dedicated advocate for both teachers and students. Outside of education, Toni enjoys music, cooking, and traveling.

Laura Hill-Bonnet

Dr. Laura Hill-Bonnet is the Associate Director of CSET. Laura previously worked at the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) as a clinical associate for the elementary program and taught courses in Child Development and Language Policy and Instructional Practice. She has also worked as a world language and additional language specialist in public elementary schools in North Carolina and California. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Comparative Education from UC-Santa Barbara, a B.F.A. in Modern Dance and French from UNC-Greensboro, and teaching credentials from UNC-Chapel Hill (TESOL) and North Carolina Central University (World Language, k-12).

Phyllis Hillwig

Chief Executive Officer at Eurekii.

Jim Hollis

Jim Hollis is the founder and Executive Director of The Calculus Roundtable; one of the most impactful nonprofit organizations for raising math and science scores for students of color in the nation. As director of Calculus Roundtable, Jim has overseen the organization’s work in over 80 schools in California, Washington state in New York. Jim is also a founding board member of The Community School for creative education the first public Waldorf school in California serving predominantly black and Latino students in Oakland’s inner city. Jim and Calculus Roundtable are the recipients of many awards and accolades including the New Profit Foundation’s top 24 social entrepreneurs creating a more equitable education system.

Shan Hong

Member of NSSA's Family and Caregiver Tutoring Advisory Group

Jill Hoogendyk

Jill Hoogendyk is the Associate Superintendent for Berkeley Unified School District after serving as the Chief of Staff in the San Francisco Unified School District. She has a Master’s in Education Administration from Stanford University and received a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to working in BUSD, Jill has held district leadership positions including Chief Academic Officer, Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and the Director of State and Federal Programs in San Francisco, and has been a site administrator at the elementary, middle and high school levels in Hayward, CA. Jill began her education career as a middle school teacher in Houston, Texas. A focused, collaborative educator, she is committed to serving diverse communities to effect positive change for students.

Hsiaolin Hsieh

Hsiaolin Hsieh is a post-doctoral researcher at the National Student Support Accelerator. Her research focuses on ensuring equitable opportunity and access to learning for multilingual learners. She uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze complex student dialogic participation in the classroom.

Bibb Hubbard

Bibb founded Learning Heroes to help build the capacity of families and educators to team up on behalf of student achievement and school success. She is a mother of two sons and champion of public education as a key driver of opportunity and economic mobility for all students.

With more than two decades of experience in communications, policy, and advocacy, she has held leadership positions at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Widmeyer Communications, and Scholastic. Her public-sector experience includes positions at the White House, the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Senate.

Karla Hudson

Karla is a Program Administrator for the Learning Acceleration team at Portland Public Schools. Karla leads the High Dosage Tutoring and Summer Acceleration Academy initiatives, which accelerate student learning and support educational equity. Karla designed and launched a comprehensive High Impact Tutoring program and curriculum in 2024, which is now an open resource available in Oregon and nationwide. Summer Acceleration Academy was the Recipient of the 2024 Excellence in Summer Learning Award from the National Summer Learning Association and the New York Life Foundation.

Elizabeth Huffaker

Elizabeth Huffaker is a Research Fellow at the National Student Support Accelerator. She uses quantitative methods to study primarily causal questions of K-12 policy and practice. Her recent work explores how secondary math reforms influence high school students’ educational opportunities, engagement, and achievement. She frequently engages in collaborative work with research practice partners in schools and districts.

Cara Jackson

Cara's work focuses on helping schools, districts, and education agencies improve the quality of educational opportunities. She conducts education research and evidence reviews on a variety of topics, including interventions intended to improve student outcomes, policies related to school and teacher quality, and teacher preparation. She is the immediate past president of the Association for Education Finance & Policy and also teaches Economic Inquiry in Education at American University. Earlier in her career, she taught preschool and kindergarten in New York City.

Yashna Jhaveri

Yashna Jhaveri, Portfolio Associate, sources and supports organizations primarily for the Innovative Schools portfolio. This involves collecting and analyzing data from grantees and researchers to determine high-impact investment areas that support the portfolio’s goal of expanding access to tech-enabled, student-centered K-9 learning environments, intentionally designed for any student to thrive.

Kyla Johnson-Trammell

For more than 25 years, I have developed my skills as both an educator and administrator and served students in several capacities including: elementary school teacher; middle school assistant principal; elementary school principal; Director of Talent Development; Associate Superintendent for Leadership, Curriculum, and Instruction; Network Superintendent and, most recently, as Interim Deputy Superintendent. I am honored to have the opportunity to lead OUSD educators in service of young people right here in my hometown.

Dorothy Jones

Dorothy Jones is the Director of Corporate, State, and Local Partnerships for the Partnership for Student Success, a part of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, working in collaboration with a coalition of more than 200 organizations to enable all students to get the evidence-based supports they need to succeed.

She holds a BSBA in Business Economics from the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Business, a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, and is an alumnus of the Denver Metro Chamber’s Leadership Foundation, Leadership Denver Class of 2021.

Mridul Joshi

Mridul is a PhD student in Economics and Education at Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, he worked at the University of Chicago as a predoctoral fellow for Professor Michael Kremer on a suite of education projects in Kenya. Previously, he has also worked at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and at the OECD. Mridul has a master’s degree in economics from the Paris School of Economics.

Jilli Jung

Jilli Jung is a postdoctoral fellow at the SCALE initiative at Stanford University. Her research focuses on examining the causal effects of K-12 education policies on adolescents’ educational and health outcomes using experimental and quasi-experimental methods. She is also interested in uncovering informative patterns and trends using descriptive methods and demographic techniques.

Lindsey Kaler

Lindsey is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University, where she is jointly associated with the Annenberg Institute and the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs. Her primary research interests center on the intersection of special education and education policy, and she conducts interdisciplinary research focused on maximizing the effectiveness of education and other service systems to support students with disabilities. Her dissertation research was focused on the paraeducator workforce in Washington state and Indiana. Lindsey holds a Ph.D. in Special Education from Boston University and a M.T. and B.A. from the University of Virginia.

Rahul Kalita

Rahul Kalita is a co-founder of Tutored by Teachers (TbT), a Series-A funded EdTech startup with investment from GSV, A Street, TMV, and American Student Assistance. He has worked at the College Board in its corporate strategy team, was on the founding team at Amplify under former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and was a general manager at Imagine Easy Solutions, an EdTech startup acquired by Chegg. He also interned at the US Department of Education under Secretary Duncan. Rahul has earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Demetra Kalogrides

Demetra Kalogrides is a research associate at the National Student Support Accelerator and for the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Kalogrides earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Santa Clara University and a Masters and PhD in sociology from the University of California at Davis.