Mary G. Visher

Mary G. Visher is a senior research associate in the postsecondary education division at MDRC, leading or serving as senior advisor on most of MDRC’s Career Technical Education-related projects in both the K–12 and postsecondary domains. Much of her research experience focuses on policies and programs that combine education and workforce development goals and strategies, including programs that involve career pathways, career academies, work-based learning, employer-driven models, and twenty-first century skills programs. Her research runs the gamut from providing formative feedback to inform program design and implementation, to creating randomized controlled trials to measure impacts. Her projects include an implementation study of CareerWise Colorado, a youth apprenticeship program, a study of YouthForce NOLA, and a project with the New World of Work program, an intervention designed to help community college students learn twenty-first century skills. She has authored many reports and papers on CTE and related topics and contributed to many advisory groups. Visher received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

updated 2017