Lisa Chavez received her Ph.D. from the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley where she studied the role geometry played as a gatekeeper to advanced math for Latino students. She conducts research on school desegregation, community college students and access to higher education. She is also a lecturer in UC Berkeley’s Chicano Studies program where she teaches an upper division course on Latinos and the education system.
Since completing her doctoral program, Lisa has worked in a variety of research settings. She spent two years at WestEd where she worked with a team of consultants to the San Francisco Unified School District as it faced competing mandates to desegregate its schools without using race/ethnicity. Next she spent a year at UC Berkeley’s Office of Student Research where, in collaboration with the Consortium for High Academic Performance, she conducted research on potential strategies to increase the number of high-achieving undergraduates from underrepresented minority groups. Immediately prior to joining the Warren Institute, Lisa worked at the Center for Latino Policy Research at UC Berkeley where she led a team of graduate students on a study of college preparation issues among Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area.