Our Team

Dr. Christina Grant is the Executive Director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. Throughout her career as an educator, administrator, and executive in some of America’s largest school systems, Dr. Grant has focused on data...

Amber Humm Patnode is the Acting Director for Proving Ground at the Center for Education Policy Research. Prior to joining the Center for Education Policy Research, Amber was the Associate Director for Innovation and Outreach of an education research...

Thomas Kane is an economist, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and faculty director of CEPR. Between 2009 and 2012, he directed the Measures of Effective Teaching project for the Bill & Melinda Gates...

Lisa Sanbonmatsu is the Director of Research and Evaluation on Proving Ground. Her work focuses on chronic absenteeism. She works with a team to conduct analyses to better understand chronic absenteeism, identify students who are at-risk, and design and...

Douglas Staiger is the John Sloan Dickey 3rd Century Professor in Economics at Dartmouth and is a PI for both the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks and Proving Ground. Before joining Dartmouth in 1998, he was a faculty member at...

Jennifer Barrios is an operations and recruitment manager for Proving Ground at CEPR. Prior to joining the organization, Jennifer spent the past years directing an after-school and summer program for Boston Public Schools in partnership with the YMCA of...

Kriti is a Network Manager for Proving Ground (PG). She completed the Masters’ in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on learning design and education policy. She has over 8 years of experience as a teacher, learning designer...

Candela Montenegro is the Operations & Recruitment Coordinator at Proving Ground, within Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research. She handles the project's operations, partnerships, and communication efforts. Before joining CEPR, Candela...

Atticus is a Research Analyst for the Proving Ground project at CEPR. He previously worked as a research assistant on projects related to the effect of educational attainment on health-related outcomes and the effect of noncognitive skills on education...

Brian Johnson serves as a Research Analyst with Proving Ground. In this role, he performs data analytic work necessary for partner districts and organizations to test new interventions designed to help more students succeed. Prior to joining Center for...

Micaela Keating is a Research Analyst for the Road to Recovery and Proving Ground projects at CEPR. Prior to joining CEPR, Micaela was an Education Research Analyst at GBH, the largest producer of television and web content for PBS. In this role, Micaela...

Atsuko Muroga is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research and a Data Fellow at the US Department of Education. She is also an affiliated Economist of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education (CBCSE) at the...

Asvita Arjun is the Data Warehouse Manager at CEPR, managing the Data Warehouse team that works on processing data from all the school districts participating in Proving Ground and NCRERN projects. Prior to joining CEPR, she was a SQL Server Database...

Jesse Dalton is the Data Management Specialist working on Proving Ground. He transfers incoming data from partners, ensuring security and accuracy. This role also enforces Data Use Agreements and implements appropriate user permissions for all CEPR...