Paula is an officer for the Strategy, Learning and Evaluation Department, supporting learning and evaluation related to the Walton Family Foundation's (WFF) Education program. Prior to joining WFF, she worked with IFF, a community development financial institution, as a senior project manager overseeing education, nonprofit, and fresh food access lending initiatives, as well as early childhood education research, while pursuing a Ph.D. in education policy and equity from Saint Louis University, studying student-parents through two-generation approaches to education. Paula has engaged in civic leadership as a Coro Fellow in St. Louis and with Washington University's Social Policy Institute as a program manager focusing on academic-industry partnerships. Before her work in education policy, she taught for five years in New York City through Teach For America and iMentor, focusing on economic mobility through education. She earned her Master of Arts in Teaching from Relay Graduate School of Education and bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Dance Performance from Marygrove College in Detroit.