Wendy Wei Email & Phone Number

New York, NY, US

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

• Serve as project director or task lead for 10+ projects focused on social policies and programs, including child care, education, SNAP, and guaranteed income, and manage early career staff on projects
• Conduct quantitative and qualitative evaluation and implementation research studies for local, state, and federal clients
• Developed surveys and analyzed data from 4000+ individuals
• Conducted 15+ focus groups and interviews with diverse group of stakeholders (caregivers, advocacy organizations, funders)

Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Designed and executed a 2-year secondary data analysis study examining the predictors and outcomes of preschool absenteeism for dissertation research
• Secured over $175,000 in funding for doctoral research and fellowships focused on collaborating with policymakers and practitioners to answer research questions of interest
• Resulted in 11 peer-reviewed publications and 13 presentations, including 6 oral presentations I delivered

• Developed course materials, taught sections, and held office hours for 4 research methods and statistics courses at the graduate level, which include Using Data in Organizations, Applied Data Analysis, Statistical.

• Developed and analyzed data from survey capturing the child care landscape of 6500+ child care programs in MA
• Created data visualizations to communicate and presented insights to staff, leadership, and stakeholders
• Conducted 10+ user interviews to identify pain points and solutions regarding data access, resulting in the first public release of comprehensive data from the state’s child care registry
• Conducted usability testing to gather feedback from 10+ target users and improve UX for the Education Data Hub webpage launch
• Collaborated cross-functionally with researchers, program staff, data analysts, and data engineers to develop statewide longitudinal data products

• Enhanced data collection tools and integrated administrative datasets to descriptively understand the landscape of early childhood initiatives in 6500+ child care programs and inform agency strategy; present results to.
• Participated in Preschool Development Grant data dashboard working group

• Used multiple quantitative methods (survival analysis, regression analysis) to examine stable access to child care of over 10,000+ children, which resulted in 1 peer-reviewed publication and 4 practitioner-oriented.
• Initiated and conducted a focus group study on 100+ child care providers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a report for the MA Department of Early Education and Care
• Developed survey focused on assessing program quality of different types of child care providers across MA

Conducted analyses on new early childhood experiences data collection elements used in statewide administrative data systems to understand trends and gaps, presented findings and identified areas of data quality improvement for state

• Worked across the National Centers for Education Research and Special Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences
• Conducted descriptive data analysis and content analysis to examine the prevalence of replication projects within ED-funded research grants, resulting in changes in the grant-funding structure and 1 peer-reviewed.
• Thematically analyzed the public’s feedback on research needs and gaps, leading to report and recommendations to ED
• Contributed to the Researcher-Practitioner Partnership and Early Learning Network grants programs

Conducted study on the impact of a play intervention on children's spatial skills, which included recruiting participants, developing instruments, delivering the intervention, coding and analysis, manuscript writing, and managing other researchers, which resulted in 1 peer-reviewed publication and 5 presentations

Developed and refined criteria used to evaluate the quality of different research designs

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Education

Master Of Education - Med, Human Development And Psychology

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Human Development, Minor In Policy Analysis & Management