Katie Shanahan is a doctoral student in Education Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include multilingual learner (ML) students, grow-your-own policies and programs, and equity in state and federal education policy. She contributes to State Leadership for ML Equity, a research-practice partnership of state leaders and researchers working to support ML students at the state policy level, co-led by Dr. Hayley Weddle and Dr. Megan Hopkins. She also supports research on grow-your-own teacher workforce initiatives as a graduate assistant at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University. She is passionate about the use of qualitative research in policy and is a graduate student co-chair for AERA’s Qualitative Research SIG.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Katie worked on multilingual learner assessment at WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and was a classroom teacher for multilingual learners in St. Louis, MO and Houston, TX. She holds bachelor’s degrees in international education policy and Portuguese from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in education from Washington University in St. Louis.