Dana Center Role
As the Center’s managing director, Afi provides executive oversight of the mobilization of personnel and programs to operationalize the Center’s vision and mission across its portfolio of projects and initiatives. The Center works to ensure that each and every student, including those who have been traditionally underserved, experiences the power and joy of mathematics, science, and early literacy in ways that are meaningful and relevant to their futures.
Afi leads the development and implementation of comprehensive, coherent, and evidence-based strategies for systemic and structural reforms that positively impact students throughout their K–16 educational journeys.
Afi establishes and operationalizes long-term strategic goals and priorities in programmatic, partnership, and philanthropic development. She directs the day-to-day mobilization of the Center’s personnel and oversees large-scale state and national initiatives to achieve the Center’s strategic goals.
In addition, Afi leads the Center’s resource development efforts, including overseeing proposal preparation and serving as the primary contact for funders to sustain the Center’s annual operating budget. She supervises and supports directors who lead teams enacting the portfolio of initiatives that advance the Center’s mission.
Prior to her current role, Afi was the Center’s director of evaluation and research and, most recently, the director of strategy and impact. In her role as the director of strategy and impact, Afi managed the Center’s evaluation and impact initiatives, oversaw resource development, and supported the project management team. As the director of evaluation and research, she led the development of comprehensive and coherent strategies for research and evaluation initiatives.
Before Joining the Dana Center
As a senior research analyst at Texas State University, Afi created and maintained longitudinally linked data sets for use in statistical analyses and developed procedures to validate data integrity. She also collaborated with faculty to develop quantitative research and evaluation design and methodology.
Prior to that, Afi worked for Austin Independent School District, leading research, evaluation, and statistical analysis projects in the areas of college readiness, postsecondary enrollment and persistence, and career and technical education. While at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education and the University of Virginia Women’s Center, she conducted evaluations of various aspects of a mentoring program pairing college women with middle school girls. Before that, Afi was a research analyst at Piedmont Virginia Community College, developing surveys and performing data analyses to assess the effectiveness of educational and administrative programs.
In addition, Afi taught first and third grades; served as an assistant principal; and taught research, evaluation, and statistics at the undergraduate and graduate school levels. She worked in national education policy, serving as a writing group member on the 2011 Council of Chief State School Officers’ Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Model Core Teaching Standards Revision Committee. She is an alumna of the Strategic Data Project Institute for Leadership in Analytics at the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research.
Education
- Ph.D., Research Statistics and Evaluation, University of Virginia
- Ed.S., Educational Leadership & Research and Evaluation Methodology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- M.Ed., Educational Administration, University of Montevallo
- B.S., Early Childhood and Elementary Education, University of Montevallo
Board and Committee Memberships
- Expert Advisor, Research Institute for Implementing Science in Education Initiative, University of Washington, 2024–present
- Member, National Advisory Board, Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2023–present
- Expert Advisor, Catalyst: Ed Research and Evaluation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2021–present
- Member, Data Collective Advisory Committee for Postsecondary Data Partnership With Student Success Initiatives, National Student Clearinghouse, 2020–present
- Member, Data Advisory Committee, Texas Association of Community Colleges, 2018–2021
- Member, Research and Learning Agenda Development Committee, Greater Texas Foundation, 2018–2021
- Member, Knowledge Development Committee, Texas Association of Community Colleges, 2017–2020
Presentations
- Cultivating Asset-Based Mathematics Learning Environments Through Instructional Intensification. Invited presentation at the Institute of Education Sciences Virtual Math Summit (September 2023).
- Using Improvement Science to Advance Equity Priorities. Invited presentation at the Strong Start to Finish 2023 Learning Network Convening, Minneapolis, MN (July 2023).
- Teacher Preparation Pathways: Differences in Program Selection and Teacher Retention. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada (April 2019).
Publications
- Van Overschelde, J. P., & Wiggins, A. Y. (2019, September 9). Teacher preparation pathways: Differences in program selection and teacher retention. Action in Teacher Education, 42(4), 311–327.
- Paulson, E. J., Van Overschelde, J. P., & Wiggins, A. Y. (2018, February). Policy brief: Accelerated developmental reading and writing coursework and student preparedness for college-level reading-intensive and writing-intensive courses in Texas community colleges. The University of Texas at Austin Education Research Center.
- Deringer, S. A., & Wiggins, A. Y. (2018). Lasting impacts of outdoor orientation programming: A preliminary study using longitudinal data. Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership, 10(2), 139–152.
- Van Overschelde, J. P., & Wiggins, A. Y. (2017, December). Policy brief: Planting seeds in fertile soil: Assessing teacher employment environments in Texas. The University of Texas at Austin Education Research Center.
- Deutsch, N. L., Wiggins, A. Y., Henneberger, A. K., & Lawrence, E. C. (2012, September 17). Combining mentoring with structured group activities: A potential after-school context for fostering relationships between girls and mentors. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 33(1), 44–76.
- Council of Chief State School Officers. (2011, April). Interstate teacher assessment and support consortium (InTASC) model core teaching standards: A resource for state dialogue.
Professional Memberships
- American Educational Research Association
- American Evaluation Association
- Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness