As a Research Associate Grace Calisi focuses on high school reform and postsecondary programs for low-income and at-risk youth.

Since joining WestEd in April 1998, Calisi has conducted extensive research on the topics of high school reform and small schools as well as national and state reform efforts.

She is coauthor of the Rethinking High Schools series and director of On The Right Track conferences, both of which have been disseminated to a wide audience including practitioners, parents, and community members.

Calisi is a member of the Regional Educational Laboratory West, where she assists in the development and design of an annual statewide conference showcasing and sharing successful classroom and schoolwide strategies.

Prior to joining WestEd, Calisi was a high school teacher in an urban high school in New Jersey.

Calisi received an EdM in secondary education from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and a BA in economics from Richard Stockton College, Pomona, New Jersey.

Ayele Dodoo serves as the Network Director for WestEd’s Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning.

Dodoo leads the Center’s efforts to develop a network for technical assistance providers that support California State Standards implementation.

Prior to joining WestEd, Dodoo served as the Director of Secondary Education in the Montebello Unified School District (MUSD), where she set the vision and implemented systems to transition and implement Common Core State Standards in middle and high schools.

Additionally at MUSD, Dodoo was responsible for the inception, development, and scaling of the Linked Learning approach districtwide, building a college and career pipeline from the middle schools. She also wrote a successful $6 million Career Pathways Trust grant to institutionalize work-based learning within the Linked Learning Pathways.

Before joining MUSD, Dodoo worked at the Los Angeles County Office of Education in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction. She provided customized instructional training to schools and districts, in addition to coordinating a principal coaching program.

Previously, Dodoo served as a UCLA Center X leadership and instructional coach in a variety of educational settings and was a teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District. She has taught masters level courses at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Whittier College.

Dodoo received a BA in history from Stanford University, an MA in education from Teachers’ College, Columbia University, and an EdD in educational leadership from UCLA.

As a Research Associate with Innovation Studies at WestEd, Pamela Fong focuses on issues related to literacy, school reform, college readiness, and Common Core State Standards.

Fong designs and conducts qualitative research, and develops evidence-based reports for educators, policymakers, and foundation executives to support education decision making.

Her work has contributed to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Knowledge Center, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Completion by Design, Reading Apprenticeship at WestEd, U. S. Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program, and California Office to Reform Education.

Fong was principal investigator on the Expository Literacy Grant Evaluation and co-authored the final report for California Academic Partnership Program.

Fong returned to WestEd in 2007, having first joined in 1999 as a Professional Developer and Research Associate for the Strategic Literacy Initiative.

Previously, she was an adjunct faculty member of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, teaching curriculum and instruction in academic literacy to pre-service teachers and graduate students.

Fong also taught academic reading and writing at University of California, Berkeley’s College Writing Program and high school English in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She received a BA in English and single-subject teaching credential from San Francisco State University and an MA in education of language, literacy, and culture from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded the Evelyn Lois Corey Graduate Fellowship.

Joy W. Lewis is a Senior Research Associate with the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning focused on project management and program implementation involving districts, schools, states, and education policy leaders. Over the past 15 years her work has centered on K-12 policy and reform, large-scale assessment, accountability, curriculum alignment, early childhood education, and implementation of educational software and data solutions. Currently, Lewis’s work addresses the implementation of the new content standards, and support for resource development projects, as well as statewide efforts to deliver broad change management systems for school improvement.

Lewis received her MA in education administration and policy analysis from Stanford University and her BA in sociology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Melissa Josue is an administrative assistant at the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd. She serves as a learning event coordinator for the Teacher Practice Networks initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She also assists the Center’s communication and dissemination efforts.

Her dissemination support at WestEd has included helping to establish the Doing What Works (DWW) dissemination team, drafting dissemination and social media strategy plans, and creating editorial and publication calendars. She has also assisted with launch efforts for new products and resources and produced e-newsletters and announcements.

Josue has also assisted the production of professional development webinars and conferences for Doing What Works and the Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West). Her project management support included leading event planning meetings, tracking production progress, as well as creating tracking tools, workflow plans, and job aids to save time, increase capacity, and streamline production.

As an active volunteer in her community, she has also served as communications director for the national advocacy organization Filipino Americans for Progress, as well as editor-in-chief of the Filipina Women’s Network’s V-Diaries magazine.

Prior to joining WestEd, she served as human resources assistant at the California headquarters of the American Cancer Society. Josue received a BA in Journalism from San Francisco State University.

Robert Montgomery is a Senior Project Manager in WestEd’s Information Services department.

Montgomery has managed numerous web projects, including e-learning courses, online professional learning communities, dynamic resource libraries, complex web applications, and usability studies.

He has also managed interactive media development projects, including video and Flash presentations.

His diverse experience in the field of education—in a variety of national and local educational contexts, as an elementary and high school teacher, and as a communications and technology director of a national school reform network—informs his web work in the real-world experience of educators.

Montgomery received a BA in American civilization from Brown University, a BS in education from the University of New Mexico, and an MA in social sciences in education from Stanford University.