EdRedesign and Opportunity Insights launch new Upward Mobility Doctoral Fellowship

EdRedesign and Opportunity Insights announced the launch of a new joint research fellowship for Harvard University doctoral students. The Upward Mobility Fellowship represents a unique partnership between two Harvard-based organizations. EdRedesign provides catalytic support to the cradle-to-career place-based partnership field to drive systems-level change and open personalized pathways to opportunity for children, youth, and families. Opportunity Insights uses big data and innovative research methods to identify barriers to economic opportunity and inform scalable solutions that will empower people throughout the United States to rise out of poverty and achieve better life outcomes.

The Upward Mobility Fellowship aims to combine the power of “big data” research with the expertise of practitioner organizations working in the cradle-to-career field to improve evidence on upward mobility for children and youth. The Fellowship seeks to train a new generation of researchers in collaborative research that can impact practice and policy for cradle-to-career place-based interventions.

“We are excited to partner with The EdRedesign Lab on this new fellowship and think it has great potential to bridge research and practice and support mobility scholars. Our hope is that in the years to come, this effort will help to answer important questions about the types of place-based models and interventions that are most effective at placing young people on pathways to social and economic mobility,” said Raj Chetty, William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University, and the director of Opportunity Insights.

Fellows will undertake a quantitative research study as the core work of their fellowship. Research topics will address an intervention related to EdRedesign’s focus on cradle-to-career place-based interventions to support economic opportunity for children and families and will make use of Opportunity Insights’ datasets, including public statistic in the Opportunity Atlas and Social Capital Atlas. Fellows will engage with field practitioners to ensure alignment between research and practitioner interests.

“We are proud to partner with Opportunity Insights on this exciting new fellowship. EdRedesign works supporting practitioners across the country in Promise Neighborhoods, Full-Service Community Schools, Blue Meridian Partners Place Matters communities, and members of Communities in Schools, Partners for Rural Impact, Purpose Built Communities, StriveTogether, and William Julius Wilson Institute networks, among others. This fellowship presents a unique opportunity for doctoral student quantitative researchers to expand the evidence base on the impact of these cross-sector place-based initiatives, which can help shape future research, practice, and policy to improve outcomes for children and families,” said Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration, and founder and director of EdRedesign.

Clare Suter has been selected from a highly qualified pool of applicants to be the first EdRedesign/OI Upward Mobility Fellow. Suter is a second-year Harvard Ph.D. student in economics, where she studies economic inequality and mobility using tools from labor and public economics. Prior to graduate school, she was a predoctoral fellow at Opportunity Insights from 2020-22 and received her B.A. in public policy with a minor in statistics from the University of Chicago.