The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute offer a unique program aimed at cultivating human capital within the education-policy sector. The Emerging Education Policy Scholars (EEPS) program brings newly minted Ph.D. scholars and Ph.D. candidates who bring to the table a keen research eye, fresh ideas, and boundless (or budding) enthusiasm for education policy to our nation’s capital to meet with education-policy experts and to share and brainstorm exciting new directions for K–12 education research. The program focuses on three over-arching goals:

  • To foster an opportunity for talented, promising scholars to connect with other scholars in their field, as well as to introduce them to key players in the education-policy arena;
  • To expand the pool of talent and ideas from which the education-policy arena currently draws;
  • and To increase understanding of how the worlds of policy and practice intersect with scholarly research in education and related fields.

For more information about the EEPS program, please contact program coordinator Abigail Hamilton.

Class of 2022–2023

William Delgado

Research assistant professor at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development in the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Department.

Melissa Diliberti

Assistant Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation and a doctoral fellow at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

Rian R. Djita

Ph.D. candidate in the Education Policy program at the University of Arkansas.

Justin B. Doromal

Research Associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population.

Beth Ann Hart

Research Associate at WestEd.

Elizabeth Huffaker

Doctoral candidate in the Economics of Education and Education Policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Education

Samantha Kane

Ph.D. candidate in education policy at Harvard University.

Hannah Kistler

Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Leadership, Policy, & Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.

Virginia Lovison

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

Meghan Mackay

Executive Director of LeveragED.

Alexis Orellana

Postdoctoral associate at the Wheelock Educational Policy Center at Boston University.

Aaron Park

Public Policy Fellow through Leadership for Educational Equity at Council of the Great City Schools in Washington, D.C.

Rachel M. Perera

Fellow in the Governance Studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Susha Roy

Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy and Program Evaluation at Harvard University.

Julia Szabo

Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Rice University and a former middle school teacher.

Iwunze Ugo

Research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Manuel Vazquez

Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oregon and a Senior Researcher at Education Northwest.

Sandy Frost Waldron

Ph.D. candidate studying Education Policy at Michigan State University.

John Westall

Postdoctoral research associate at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative at Michigan State University.