Jessica Heppen, a nationally recognized expert in education research, policy, and practice, is the president & CEO of AIR. Dr. Heppen been with AIR for 20 years and, in that time, has held several key roles during her tenure.
Will Tad Johnston is a senior technical assistance consultant at AIR specializing in mathematics education. He works with the AIR District and School Improvement Team as a mathematics instructional coach working with teachers, building instructional coaches, and administrators in high poverty schools with high percentages of students of color and/or ...
Douglas Fuchs is an Institute Fellow at AIR. He is also Professor of Special Education and Nicholas Hobbs Chair of Special Education and Human Development and Professor Pediatrics in the Vanderbilt University Medical School, Department of Special Education. At Vanderbilt, Fuchs has been principal investigator of 50 federally-sponsored research grants. ...
Roddy Theobald is a managing researcher in the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) at AIR. His primary responsibilities include overseeing eight externally-funded research projects related to the teacher labor market and its implications for student outcomes. He has extensive experience using large administrative datasets to ...
Trenita Childers is a health care policy researcher at AIR. Her work focuses primarily on health equity, social determinants of health, and communicating health information to broad audiences.
Rashawn Ray is an AIR vice president and the executive director of the AIR Equity Initiative. Launched in 2021, the AIR Equity Initiative is a five-year, $100M+ investment in behavioral and social science research and technical assistance to address the underlying causes of systemic inequities and to increase opportunities for people ...
Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds is a managing researcher at the AIR in Washington, DC, where she serves as the co-director of the National Center on Intensive Intervention, and as project director for an Investing in Innovation and Improvement (i3) Development Grant. She previously coordinated services for the Response to Intervention Center ...
Jason Katz is a senior researcher at AIR and serves as a deputy director for a pilot project conducted by AIR’s Quality Initiative. He has expertise in implementation science, program evaluation, and continuous quality improvement.
Dr. Katz leads and co-leads many qualitative data collection activities. He is currently the qualitative lead ...
Clea Vannet is a qualitative researcher in the Health Program at AIR. She conducts evaluations and implements programs that seek to address health equity and improve behavioral health systems and outcomes for patients served, in community with those most impacted. Vannet has over seven years of experience designing qualitative data ...
Carmen Ferro is a communications director with AIR’s Human Services Division. She works with division leadership to develop and implement a strategic communications plan to extend the reach of AIR research projects on topics such as workforce development, youth justice, education, and child welfare. Ferro specializes in synthesizing and translating ...