Ronald Ferguson
AGI Director

Robert Hanna
Assistant to the Director

Ann Ballantine
Consultant

Ann provides communications and project management services to the AGI. These include the Annual AGI Conference event management, the AGI web site and printed communications materials. Ann has over thirty years of experience in consulting and corporate management roles including finance, strategic planning, marketing and technology.  She has directed and contributed to diverse client projects including market research, strategic planning, communications, fundraising and web site development.  She holds an M.B.A. in finance from New York University’s Stern School, an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. cum laude in History from Boston University.

John helps to manage and coordinate all AGI projects, including assisting with analyses and managing much of the communication with partners both inside and outside the University. These projects include work with public school systems and community leaders as well as students and faculty researchers. John earned a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University.  Before coming to the AGI he worked as a Financial Analyst at NBC Universal.

Tanya has experience as a behavior management specialist in inner-city high schools and is helping the AGI to structure a program of work around social dynamics and school culture. Tanya earned her BA in History and Political Science from Boston University where she focused on social movements and the African American experience in the US. Having worked for community organizations in New York City and Newark, NJ as well as the NYC Dept. of Education, Tanya brings an urban youth development perspective to the team. She is currently a Masters candidate in the Education, Policy, and Management program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education examining the extent to which educational policies can close the achievement gap and affect social change.

As part of a larger project on MCAS gains in Massachusetts high schools, Elizabeth is working on a literature review and school case studies. Her focus is supports for special education high school students and other school-level processes that enable or hinder their academic success. Elizabeth received her B.A. from Columbia University and is currently a master student at Harvard Graduate School of Education, focusing on Education Policy and Management.

Miriam Archibong
Research Assistant

Miriam functions in multiple roles as a member of the AGI’s Conspiracy to Succeed team. She has helped with the development of program ideas, developed an activity timeline for program participants, is developing ideas for a pilot commercial for the program, and will make site visits to participating schools. She also brings excitement and 3 years of work experience in an urban public high school to the team. Miriam received her B.A. in Political Science and minor in Philosophy from Spelman College in 2009. During her free time, she enjoys jogging, playing tennis, and spending time with her family. Her hometown is Atlanta, Georgia.

Felicia is conducting a review of evidence on school finance equity. She is evaluating the current state of inequity between states, within states, and within districts in terms of finance as well as other resources such as teachers and technology. She received her B.A. in public policy from Stanford University with a concentration in education, and is currently working towards her J.D. at Harvard University. Prior to joining AGI, she was a Teach for America Corps Member in the Bay Area. She taught Algebra, Geometry and Algebra II to high school students in San Jose.

As a Research Associate at the AGI, Nathan focuses on two projects using data from the Tripod Project. The first project focuses on the contextual and individual predictors of "acting white," providing one of the first comprehensive empirical tests of the "oppositional culture" thesis. The second project, in collaboration with Cambridge Education and with Stephen Raudenbush at the University of Chicago, focuses on measuring classroom quality using multilevel statistical modeling. Nathan is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Harvard University, where he is also an affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences (IQSS) and a doctoral Fellow in the Multi-disciplinary Program in Social Policy and Inequality. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Psychology from Kansas State University, where he conducted research on the effect of trust on team problem-solving, winning honors at the Sigma Xi student research conference. His dissertation focuses on socioeconomic disparities in adolescent sexual risk-taking, using a qualitative and quantitative panel survey. He has also published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the journal Pediatrics, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Rhonda Baylor
Research Assistant

Rhonda is an AGI research assistant working on the “Pathways to Prosperity” project. She is conducting qualitative research on the ways that General Educational Development (GED) administrators and their organizations help students to transition from the classroom to the workforce and to institutions of higher education. Rhonda is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where her concentration is Higher Education. She received an M.B.A. from the University of Baltimore and a B.S. from Morgan State University. In Baltimore, Rhonda taught mathematics and writing courses at a local community college.

As part of the AGI team, Eric is researching the managerial practices of successful urban public schools. As a recipient of the Urban Scholar Fellowship, Eric's research will focus on studying ways to close the achievement gap through the implementation of successful managerial practices. Before entering graduate school, Eric served as the program director for a New York City youth development nonprofit organization. Through his work in some of the most embattled schools and communities in NYC, Eric has helped over 6,500 young people navigate the college application process and identify potential career paths. Presently, Eric is enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a master's degree candidate. Eric earned a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the State University of New York at Purchase.

Kyoung currently manages the “How I Was Parented” project that the Achievement Gap Initiative launched in the spring of 2009. She oversees the data collection process including designing the research tools, recruiting select Harvard undergraduate and graduate students for interviews and training a team of interviewers. Prior to joining the Achievement Gap Initiative, she worked as a human capital and organizational effectiveness professional in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. During the past summer, she worked at Washington DC Public Schools in the Transformation Management Office as a 2009 DC Metro Education Pioneer Fellow. Kyoung earned a B.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and is pursuing a Masters in Public Policy degree in urban education at the Harvard Kennedy School. She discovered her passion for school reform when she was conducting her B.A. thesis paper on charter school accountability.