Katharine Stevens

Katharine Stevens leads the early-childhood program at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), focusing on the research, policy, and politics of early health, development, and learning. She also studies the critical role of early childhood in boosting mobility and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty in disadvantaged communities, and the challenges of implementing rapidly expanding early-childhood initiatives. Before joining AEI, Dr. Stevens founded and led Teachers for Tomorrow, one of the first teacher-apprenticeship programs in the U.S., which recruited and trained teachers for New York City’s lowest-performing schools. She began her career in public education as an assistant in a Head Start classroom in St. Louis, Missouri and a preschool teacher in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Stevens has a Ph.D. in education policy from Columbia University, a M.Ed. from Teachers College, an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a B.A. in US history from the University of Chicago.