Cecilia Speroni


Biography:

Cecilia Speroni is an evaluator in the Evaluation and Assessment Capability and a research affiliate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At NSF, she supports various evidence-building activities, including leading the development and pilot testing of a data collection system designed to support NSF’s human capital development programs. Prior to NSF, Dr. Speroni was a senior researcher at Mathematica for 10 years where she designed and led large-scale impact evaluations in K-12 and higher education for federal agencies, state departments, and foundations. She has evaluated a variety of human capital development efforts, ranging from an evaluation of mentoring approaches to connect workers with training opportunities, to advanced high school curricula to improve college access, and studies of college summer enrichment programs for minority students to diversify the health and scientific workforce. She has also served as the deputy director of STEM research at Mathematica, where she helped manage the research portfolio. Prior to her tenure at Mathematica, she has worked at the American Institutes for Research and the Community College Research Center on a wide range of education policy topics, including the high-school-to-college transition, bilingual education, and adequacy and equity in education financing. Dr. Speroni earned her doctorate degree in Economics and Education, with distinction, from Columbia University. She is a certified reviewer of the Institute of Education Sciences’ What Works Clearinghouse to assess the quality of empirical studies, and her research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals such as American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Journal of Labor Economics, and Labour Economics.<<<