Ruben G. Martinez is an assistant professor and acting associate director in the BRIDGE program in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. Dr. Martinez is also the lead of implementation for Advance-RI CTR and the vice-chair of the American Psychological Association's Advisory Committee for Measurement-Based Care. The primary goal of his work is to leverage equitable implementation methods to improve systems of care for youth experiencing health and mental health problems. At BRIDGE, he engages in consultation, mentorship and training related to implementation science and serves as a site PI and co-investigator on several federally funded grants, including the IMPACT center, an NIMH ALACRITY center focused on optimizing implementation of EBPs for youth mental health problems in low-resource environments through piloting pragmatic, equity-focused implementation methods. He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020 and completed his predoctoral residency and NIMH T32 postdoctoral fellowship at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He obtained his clinical license from the state of RI in 2025.

Richard Murnane, an economist, is Thompson Research Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Over the last 40 years, Murnane has studied relationships between the U.S. economy and the U.S. educational system. Murnane and MIT economist Frank Levy examined the impacts of technical change on skill demands, producing the 1996 book Teaching the New Basic Skills (Free Press) and the 2004 book, The New Division of Labor (Princeton University Press). Murnane and economist Greg Duncan then examined the respects in which growth in family income inequality in the United States has affected educational opportunities for children from low-income families. Products included the 2011 edited volume, Whither Opportunity (Russell Sage), and the 2014 book, Restoring Opportunity (Harvard Education Press and Russell Sage). To help education researchers improve strategies for making causal inferences, Murnane and Harvard statistician John Willett wrote the book, Methods Matter (Oxford U. Press, 2011). In 2017 Murnane completed a research project with Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon that examined trends in the use of different types of private schools by low- and higher-income families in the United States. Currently Murnane is working with John Papay and Ann Mantil of Brown University on research examining the impacts of the Massachusetts public school student competency determination system on long-term outcomes for students from disadvantaged groups. Murnane is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education and is a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

Quentin Jenkins Jr. (He/Him) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Formerly, Quentin was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Junior Professional Research Program (JPR) at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. 

Quentin graduated from Pitzer College and currently holds a Bachelor's in Sociology and Africana Studies with honors. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, he is a change agent and advocate for equal opportunity education. As a first-generation college graduate, Quentin hopes to continue his research to dismantle the barriers that students of color face in educational institutions. As an aspiring sociologist of education and Mellon Mays fellow Quentin’s previous research analyzed the ways that COVID-19 exacerbated the inequalities and inequities for first-gen, low-income students of color in higher education during a summer research program at Harvard. Additionally, as a Research Assistant at Northwestern's SROP program Quentin analyzed the disparate experiences of Black LGBTQ+ students that may result in them being punished and criminalized differently from Black cis-gender heterosexual students and from non-Black LGBTQ youth.

Through doctoral work at Brown, Quentin looks forward to investigating questions at the nexus of race/ethnicity, education, social inequality, and the sociology of the Black family. Outside of academe, Quentin enjoys playing volleyball, listening to music, and trying out new foods!

Prudence L. Carter is Sarah and Joseph Jr. Dowling Professor of Sociology at Brown University. 

Prior to coming to Brown, Carter was E.H. and Mary E. Pardee Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Berkeley from 2016-2021. Professor Carter’s research focuses on explanations of enduring inequalities in education and society and their potential solutions. Specifically, she examines academic and mobility disparities shaped by the effects of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in the United States and global society.

Carter’s award-winning book, Keepin’ It Real: School Success beyond Black and White (2005), debates various cultural explanations used to explain school achievement and racial identity for low-income Black and Latino youth in the United States.  Keepin’ It Real was recognized as the 2006 co-winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award given by the American Sociological Association (ASA) for its contribution to the eradication of racism and was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. 

Her other books include Stubborn Roots: Race, Culture, and Inequality in U.S. & South African Schools and Closing the Opportunity Gap: What American Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance (co-edited with Dr. Kevin Welner)—both published by Oxford University Press. Stubborn Roots encompasses a multi-year mixed-method study of racial group dynamics in majority-minority and majority-white schools in the United States and South Africa and illuminates cultural and organizational factors that inhibited the realization of true school integration. Closing the Opportunity Gap brings together top American experts who offer concise, research-based essays, which paint a powerful and shocking picture of denied economic and educational opportunities.  

Professor Carter’s scholarship and writing have appeared also in several journals and book volumes, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Social Problems, Sociology of Education, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Teachers College Record, Review of Research in Education, and the British Journal of Sociology.  It has also been featured on multiple national public radio and TV news programs. 

A Brown alumna (’91), Professor Carter received a Bachelor of Science degree in applied mathematics and economics. She earned a Master of Art in Sociology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Master of Philosophy and Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University.  

She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Education, Sociological Research Association, and the American Education Research Association. Professor Carter was the 2022-23 President of the American Sociological Association.

Preeya Pandya Mbekeani is a Researcher at the American Institutes for Research and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and a member of the Educational Opportunity in Massachusetts project team. Preeya studies inequality in postsecondary access and completion for low-income and minoritized students and policies aimed at reducing these inequalities. Preeya earned her doctorate in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she was a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. She holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.

Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Preeya worked at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. She began her career as a high school teacher and spent several years as a counselor in a college access program.

Pierre de Galbert is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University in the education department. His research focuses on language of instruction policies in low- and middle-income countries, and the association between language policies and learning in the early years of formal school. He is particularly interested in the multi-dimensional set of factors that influence both the language policy decisions and their implementation. In the US context, his research focuses on supporting multilingual learners in linguistically diverse school systems. In addition, he partners with governments and non-governmental organizations to work on policy and program evaluations using causal methods.

Philip Oreopoulos is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, at Berkeley and his M.A. from the University of British Columbia. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research.  He has held a previous visiting appointment at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is editor at the Journal of Labor Economics.  Dr. Oreopoulos’ current work focuses on education policy, especially the application of behavioral economics to education and child development.  

He often examines this field by initiating and implementing large-scale field experiments, with the goal of producing convincing evidence for public policy decisions.

Peter Hull is a Professor of Economics at Brown University, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and affiliated faculty at MIT Blueprint Labs. His work in education focuses on the evaluation of school quality and access; he also studies topics in applied econometrics, crime, discrimination, and healthcare. Hull received his PhD in economics from MIT in 2017 and was previously an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and an Assistant Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

Paja Faudree is a linguistic anthropologist whose research interests include language and politics, indigenous literary and social movements, the interface between music and language, the ethnohistory of New World colonization, and the global marketing of indigenous rights discourses, indigenous knowledge, and plants. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and came to Brown following a Harper-Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. She is affiliated with Brown's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Native American and Indigenous Studies, the Program in Science and Technology Studies, and Development Studies. Professor Faudree teaches courses on language and society, social movements in Latin America, language and politics, language and music, and the anthropology of drugs. She is also a published poet and playwright, and holds an MFA from Brown's literary arts program.

Olga Pagán is a Research Scientist at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University where she designs and conducts research on teacher professional learning with the Research Partnership for Professional Learning. Olga uses mixed methods to understand societal, school, and classroom-level contextual influences on teacher practice, teacher well-being, and student outcomes. She is interested in learning how teachers and schools can create equitable environments for racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse learners. Prior to joining Annenberg, Olga completed her PhD in Applied Psychology at New York University. Olga also holds an MA in Elementary Education with a bilingual certification from Stanford University and a BA in Psychology from Yale University. She has eight years of classroom experience in teaching and instructional coaching.