Vernisa Donaldson

Vernisa Donaldson is committed to helping college programs best serve students with the power of data-driven decision-making. She believes that good data practices and program evaluation are integral tools for creating opportunities to access and succeed in higher education for marginalized students. She is also interested in promoting student voices and perspectives in her work.

Vernisa has dedicated the last seven years to working in partnership with college success programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) that support STEM students in middle and high school (CUNY Tutor Corps), students in foster care (CUNY Foster Care Initiative), and formerly incarcerated college students (John Jay’s College Initiative) to conduct multi-year evaluations and provide data collection, management, and analysis support to inform day-to-day decision-making. Her work on these projects has also contributed to the field of higher education research and practice for marginalized students through reporting about programmatic practices, outcomes, and lessons learned.

She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.S. in Applied Social Research with a focus on public policy research from Hunter College.