Deborah Bial, Ed.D.

Deborah Bial, Ed.D. has focused her research and career in the field of education and leadership development. Her experience in facilitating dialogue around issues of diversity and in guiding selective institutions of higher education towards innovative and improved admissions policy has gained her national recognition in the higher education community in the United States.

Bial is the president and founder of The Posse Foundation, a youth leadership development and college access organization that sends teams of students from diverse backgrounds to selective colleges and universities. In this capacity she manages an organization with 70 employees, a budget of $6 million, and assets of $39 million. Her 28 person board represents industry leaders in the fields of business, media, and higher education. Bial has grown The Posse Foundation from a concept into one of the most comprehensive college access and scholarship programs in the United States. Today it supports programs in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington D.C. Under her leadership The Posse Foundation will expand into five additional cities and within the next fifteen years have over 7,000 alumni throughout the United States.

Bial earned her masters and doctoral degrees in education with a focus on higher education administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University. In 1999, Bial received a $1.9 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for her dissertation work, which focused on the design and assessment of the BDI, a new college admissions tool that could be used in addition to traditional college admissions measures. The new tool, named the Bial Dale College Adaptability Index, is used to assess non-cognitive traits that may predict persistence and identify leadership potential. To date approximately 6,000 students have been evaluated using this new method.

Bial's consulting company serves educational organizations and foundations. Bial has been hired to facilitate strategic planning initiatives; evaluate program; design new programs and curriculum; train staff; and develop senior leadership.

Bial completed her undergraduate degree in English literature at Brandeis University. She has honorary doctorates from DePauw University, Lafayette College, and Middlebury College.

Stacy Dale is a health researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., where she focuses on program evaluations and cost-effectiveness studies. She is currently the Principal Investigator for the evaluation design of the National Institutes of Health's extramural loan repayment program, and is assessing whether they are meeting their goals of recruiting and retaining doctoral degree holders in certain areas of research. She recently was the deputy director and co-principal investigator for a project for the Commonwealth Fund that evaluated the effect of Medicare policy changes on Medicaid costs. Previously, she was a research associate a the Mellon Foundation, where she studied the economic returns to college quality, contributed to William G. Bowen's and Derek Bok's study of college and university admissions "The Shape of the River: The Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions" (by William G. Bowen and Derek Bok), and investigated the sources of the racial disparities in students' in-college performance and postcollege outcomes. She has also been a consultant to law schools in assessing the affect of different admissions policies on the composition of students they enroll. She has bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Michigan, and a Master's Degree in Public Affairs from Princeton University.

Alba Rodriguez is a senior research assistant for the Alternative Admissions Study funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This study is run out of Harvard University and overseen by Gary Orfield and Deborah Bial. Rodriguez manages the data collection and analysis for this study and works closely with Bial in her ongoing research on diversity and higher education. Rodriguez also manages projects for Firefly Education including a major assessment initiative with the Washington Education Foundation. Rodriguez completed her BS in philosophy and biopsychology at Tufts University and received her masters degree in human development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.