Sheena McConnell

Sheena McConnell is a vice president and director of human services research in Mathematica’s Washington, DC office. Her research focuses primarily on evaluating policies to promote employment and strong families in disadvantaged populations. She is currently directing a national experimental evaluation of the Workforce Investment Act’s Adult and Dislocated Workers programs for the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment, and Training Administration. These programs, which provide training, employment counseling, and other employment-related services, are the backbone of the public workforce investment system in the United States. She also has evaluated the use of vouchers to pay for training, programs to assist low-income people who are interested in starting their own business, and programs to assist low-income couples improve their relationships. McConnell is an expert at designing and implementing experimental evaluations of social service interventions for low-income populations. Recently, she completed an experimental study of the impact of teachers from Teach For America and the Teaching Fellows programs on the test scores of students, most of whom were low-income. She received a bachelor’s of science from Churchill College, Cambridge University, England, and a doctorate in economics from Princeton University.