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Dr. Matthew Finster is a principal researcher with 15 years of experience working in education and educational policy research. His expertise lies in providing technical assistance on educational research and program implementation, which often focuses on improving educator effectiveness and student outcomes. He has significant experience working with federal education grantees, state education agencies, local education agencies, and schools on building their capacity to implement their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans. He is also the author of numerous articles and technical reports centered around education and human capital management that have appeared in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Journal of Education Human Resources, and other notable publications.

Dr. Rebecca McGill-Wilkinson is an education researcher with two decades of experience designing and implementing evaluation and research projects. She has extensive expertise in a broad range of impact and implementation evaluation approaches, including quasi-experimental designs, randomized control trials, survey design and analysis methods, systematic evidence reviews, and measure development. Her work includes evaluations of federal education policies, including the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). With a background in developmental psychology, she has contributed to systematic evidence reviews for both the Administration of Children and Families and the U.S. Department of Education. McGill-Wilkinson is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on a range of topics and has delivered over 40 conference presentations and invited talks in academic and practice settings and is a prolific blog author.

Liam Ristow is a mixed methods evaluator with 20+ years of evaluation experience in the areas of K-12 and postsecondary education, services for disconnected youth, and community-level change initiatives addressing health and homelessness. He has extensive experience designing and conducting complex multi-year implementation and outcome evaluations for clients at the federal, state and local levels. Ristow brings particular expertise in design of data collection protocols, qualitative data collection and analysis, and development of relevant, actionable evaluation reports.

Dr. Heinrich Hock is an economist with 19 years of experience conducting research on labor, education, disability employment, and social insurance. His work focuses on producing results that help policymakers and program staff understand outcomes for priority populations and research-based options for improving outcomes. He develops rigorous and feasible plans for research designs, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of findings. Hock has led work on over a dozen labor-related projects for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and other funders to assess the outcomes for groups such as dislocated workers, youth and adult jobseekers with disabilities, and veterans, among other groups. Hock also has played a key role in U.S. Department of Education (ED) studies to identify solutions for improving career outcomes among special education and adult education participants. 

Taylor Williamson has nearly 20 years of experience leading business development efforts, managing programs, developing strategy, and conducting health systems research. He has more than a decade of supervisory experience as a project manager or technical lead for five U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded projects. Williamson focuses on decentralization and local governance, information systems, health insurance design, public policy, and capacity strengthening. He has experience with such health systems challenges as improving data quality and data use at national and sub-national levels; reducing service barriers for HIV, neglected tropical diseases, and family planning; assessing and improving civil society and local government capacity; and strengthening decentralization. He has published several manuscripts and working papers on civil society capacity strengthening, advocacy, evidence use, decentralization, and human rights.

Laura Blake has more than 20 years of experience in leading scientific programs and research in the environmental science and policy domain. She has deep expertise in surface water quality restoration and protection and has spent her career designing and implementing scientific studies to support efforts to protect human health and aquatic environments. She has significant knowledge of Clean Water Act rules and regulations and has extensive experience supporting federal and state regulatory programs with implementation of and compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.