An interdisciplinary scholar, Noliwe Rooks’ is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor in Africana Studies at Brown University and the chair of Africana Studies. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. She works on the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion and adornment; race, capitalism and education, and the urban politics of food and cannabis production.

The author of four books and numerous articles, essays and op-ed’s, Rooks has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson School among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a regular contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine and NPR.

Nichole manages the Institute’s website and digital presence. Prior to joining Annenberg, she ran a digital agency focused on building with and contributing to the open-source software community.

Alongside that community mentality, she brings over 15 years of experience in professional web and digital portfolio management. Her work at Annenberg is focused on fueling more connections within the institute and is inspired by her active presence in the local digital and fitness communities.

When not at work, Nichole can often be found teaching Pilates, riding her bike, or hiking around New England. She loves making introductions between friends and spends any spare time looking for new things to try or people to meet in the Providence area.  

Niamh Stull is a PhD student in political science at Brown. Her primary areas of research interest are in local politics and education. Before Brown, Niamh graduated from Boston University and worked as 3rd math tutor in Detroit through City Year.

Mithila is a project manager with the Literacy Launch partnership at the Annenberg Institute, where she supports the overall execution of the team’s research, stewards relationships with external education agencies, and contributes to quantitative analysis. She is deeply committed to leveraging innovation to advance equity and is passionate about the design and implementation of policies that enable communities to thrive. 

Prior to joining Annenberg, Mithila was a researcher with NORC at the University of Chicago’s global affairs division for nearly six years, where she led analysis for and supported multi-stakeholder education and labor research projects with clients including DARPA, USAID, and USDOL. Most recently, she completed an MPP from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy; she also holds a BA in Economics and French from Grinnell College. Mithila’s professional interests lie in the intersection of education, AI policy, and economic mobility.

Michelle McNamara is a Senior Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, where she researches the trajectory of effective educators. Michelle joins the institute with 20 years of education and research experience. She directed the National Household Education Survey at the National Center for Education Statistics and has also evaluated teacher professional development and instructional approaches for educational nonprofits. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Maryland, a master's degree in Childhood Education from Pace University and a master’s degree in Politics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Michelle's classroom experiences teaching first grade in the Bronx drive her beliefs in educational equity and the importance of high quality instruction.

Melissa Arnold Lyon is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Rockefeller College at the University at Albany, a former Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on the political economy of education with a particular interest in teachers, institutions, and other organized interests. She has published on topics such as teachers' unions, local politics of education, and cross-sector collaborations.

Melissa holds a PhD in Education Policy and Social Analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from Rice University. Prior to graduate school Melissa taught middle school in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Matthew P. Steinberg is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. He is a University Affiliate Faculty at the Schar School of Policy and Government and a Senior Fellow at EdPolicy Forward: The Center for Education Policy at George Mason University. Dr. Steinberg is an Affiliated Researcher with the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, an Academic Affiliate with the Educator Impact Laboratory at Mathematica Policy Research, and an IUR Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research. A recipient of the 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Steinberg received his PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago. During his tenure as a doctoral student, Dr. Steinberg was an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the University of Chicago Committee on Education, a researcher at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and a Mathematica Policy Research Summer Fellow. Prior to graduate school, he was an investment banker and a New York City Teaching Fellow.  Dr. Steinberg's research addresses issues of educational significance at the intersection of the economics of education and education policy, including: teacher evaluation and human capital; urban school reform; school discipline and safety; and school finance. His work aims to inform local and national policy discussions on the impact of education policies and practices on the distribution of teacher effectiveness and the educational outcomes of students, particularly the most disadvantaged among the population. To do so, he matches rigorous econometric methods with rich administrative data to produce empirical evidence that answers fundamentally important education policy questions. Dr. Steinberg's research has appeared in leading education and economics journals, including the American Journal of Education, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, Educational Researcher, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, National Tax Journal, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. Dr. Steinberg's research has also appeared in policy and practice publications that reach district, state, and national policymakers and school leaders, including Cityscape, Education Next and The State Education Standard.

Matt Pecenco is a labor economist, focusing on topics related to the criminal justice system, education, and development. In particular, Matt has made use of quasi- or fully experimental government policies to study the effects of incarceration, peer preferences in education choices, and the role of experience in generating entrepreneurship. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2020.

Matthew Kraft is a Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research and teaching interests include the economics of education, education policy analysis, and applied quantitative methods for causal inference.  His work focuses on two primary areas: improving the effectiveness of K-12 educators and schools, and examining how education systems are affected by climate change and can be part of the solution.  Matt served as a Senior Economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2024-25. He is also the founder and faculty director of SustainableED - an initiative focused on advancing research at the intersection of education systems and our changing climate. 

He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles on topics including hiring, professional development, evaluation, working conditions, strikes, shortages, and layoffs in the teacher labor market; interpreting effect sizes in education research; school-based tutoring and mentoring programs, and learning time in school.   Previously, he taught 8th grade English in Oakland USD and 9th grade humanities at Berkeley High School in California.  He holds a doctorate in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education as well as a master's in International Comparative Education and a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University.

My research is in the broad areas of social inequality and stratification, social demography and public policy, with an emphasis on inequality of educational opportunity and health among children and families.  I am interested in the dynamics of inequality over the life cycle and across generations, and the ways in which circumstances during childhood have long-reaching effects throughout children’s schooling and into adulthood.  Past work has examined the effects of childhood health and health policies on academic achievement and socioeconomic attainment; and educational inequality in health among children in immigrant families. 

My current research includes investigation of class inequality in parental investments and parenting practices that are strongly implicated in children's development: both trends in patterns of inequality over time, as well as the effects of public sector investments on reducing inequality in family behavior and child development.   

My research has been published in Social Forces, Demography, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, Social Science Research and other venues, and funded by NIH, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.  At Brown, I am also an affiliate of the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC), the Annenberg Institute, the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, and Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4).  I received my PhD in sociology from UCLA in 2007.