Dr. Joanna Geller, PhD

Director of Policy, Research, and Evaluation at the NYU Metro Center

Dr. Geller’s research focuses on capturing the multifold impacts of school-family partnerships and family leadership, as well as identifying the conditions that make these impacts possible. Through mixed methods and participatory research with parent leaders, Dr. Geller has elevated the importance of family engagement and leadership in a range of settings. She was the PI of the federally funded Kentucky Statewide Family Engagement Center evaluation, as well as the Innovation and Information We Are a Village initiative in Central Falls, RI. In 2021, she was the recipient of the $1 million Lyle Spencer award from the Spencer Foundation to conduct a national landscape analysis of parent leadership organizations and study how parent leaders influence their children’s learning and civic development. In the same year, she was a recipient of a WT Grant Foundation Reducing Inequality grant to study the impact of an intergenerational leadership development initiative, the Children’s and Parent’s Leadership Training Institute. Dr. Geller has led external evaluations for many district- and community-based family engagement and parent leadership initiatives nationwide. Her work is further informed by her experiences as an active public school parent of two boys. She has a Ph.D. in Community Research and Action from Vanderbilt University.