Natalie Ferrell

Natalie currently works as a Director of School Design for EPIC Schools, a new network of high schools she helped design as part of the Expanded Success Initiative, which focuses on increasing college and career readiness outcomes for black and Latino young men and is the educational component of the NYC's Young Men's Initiative. Natalie has a background in bilingual education, research and youth development. She began her career as a bilingual educator at a middle school for recently arrived immigrants in Upper Manhattan. During her years teaching, she became acutely aware of the effects of relationships and learning conditions on student success and returned to graduate school to study adolescent health, programming and policy, publishing research on the effects of school choice on student well-being in post-Katrina New Orleans. Natalie also spent a number of years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic, where she worked primarily on collaborative action research, gender initiatives and capacity building with a youth development nonprofit. Natalie holds a BA in Latin American Studies and a Masters in Public Heath from Tulane University, as well as a Masters in Teaching with a focus on ESL and bilingual education.

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