Lisa Towne Principal and Research Director
Lisa has 15 years of experience in education, holding positions in the public, non-profit and for-profit sectors; working in and across policy, strategy and research; and engaging at the federal, state and local levels on a broad range of K-12 issues. At Education First, she has led multiple engagements with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, developing research-based tools, conducting policy analyses, and providing strategic grantmaking counsel. She was part of the Education First team that helped develop the state of Hawai'i's winning Race to the Top application, and contributed to the development of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's plan to turn around its lowest-performing schools. Among her duties as research director, Lisa manages the firm's research team of policy analysts.
Immediately before joining Education First as its first research director, Lisa was conducting research, policy analysis and technical writing for a national client base as an independent consultant. Her clients included the National Academy of Sciences, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the William T. Grant Foundation and the National Education Association.
For the 10 years prior to joining Education First, Lisa was a senior program officer at the National Academy of Sciences, where she published and lectured widely on the nature of scientific evidence and its application to K-12 issues. She also served as the assistant director for social and behavioral sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as a Presidential Management Fellow and social science analyst in the U.S. Department of Education Planning and Evaluation Service. Lisa has taught quantitative methods and statistics at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies.
Lisa earned a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Vermont. She recently served a term as an elected board member of the Portland Village Charter School, where she chaired the policy and governance committees and coordinated oversight of the school improvement plan. Lisa resides in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two school-aged sons.