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Jennifer de Forest

Director of Research and Learning, YouthTruth

Jen has a lifelong passion for the art and science of school improvement.

Prior to joining YouthTruth, Jen spent nearly a decade in the classroom. She has led schools in California and New York City, and from the perch of a state association, she worked with countless educators on school-based research projects and forged a consortium of more than 50 schools that worked together to assess students’ SEL.

Jen earned a masters as a fellow at Teachers College, Columbia and a doctorate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At Harvard, she served as co-chair of the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review. As a professor at the University of Virginia, Jen published widely about the role of philanthropy in education reform and taught courses on research design.

Jen relishes her work at YouthTruth, where she has the opportunity to help school leaders access the insights of their communities — and turn those insights into actionable data.

Jennifer de Forest's Blog Posts

LGBTQ+ Youth Deserve More — And Philanthropy Can Help

This post was originally published in July 2022. We re-share it now, not only because its message remains vital but because it continues to be critical that we listen to what students themselves share about their experiences and their needs. In the year since this...

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Recent Blogs

It’s Time for a New Approach to the Current Context
It’s Time for a New Approach to the Current Context

I think it’s time for a shift away from the approach that some larger U.S. foundations and key infrastructure organizations have taken to operating in the second Trump administration. That approach has been based on assumptions that may have made sense in mid-November...

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The Case for ‘21st Century Philanthropy’
The Case for ‘21st Century Philanthropy’

The Trump administration’s relentless assault on USAID, its attempted freeze of federal funding to U.S. nonprofits, and its stated intentions of hobbling the work of vital nonprofits around the world are only the most recent examples — albeit completely avoidable and...

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