Vanessa Perez Marquez has experience in project coordination and data analysis. She is particularly interested in supporting early childhood development through conducting interdisciplinary research that informs culturally responsive strategies, informal learning, and educational equity practices.

Vanessa is a researcher on Ready to Learn, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and led by PBS and CPB. The goal of this initiative is to investigate how educational media and digital resources can have a positive impact on early learning as well as promote STEM and literacy development within children of low income-communities. Vanessa is also a researcher on the La Fuerza-STEM project, funded by the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Univision and Literacy Partners, that aims to promote opportunities for Latinx families with young children to engage in informal science practices through a telenovela and caregiver workshops. In both projects, Vanessa supports CCT’s work with instrument development, participant recruitment, mixed methods data collection, and analysis in English and Spanish.

In 2023, Vanessa joined the IDEAS 2 project team, funded by the National Science Foundation, which focuses on expanding engineering design Maker programming accessibility within autism-inclusion schools in New York City. The goal of implementing Maker programming is to help young people on the autism spectrum gain the skills and interests needed to support careers in design and engineering.

Vanessa received her BA in Psychology and Spanish from Colgate University. Prior to joining EDC, she cofounded an ESL tutoring group focused on promoting English literacy within the local farm workers community of upstate New York. For her senior thesis project, she researched the pandemic’s impact on children’s learning preferences, as it relates to learning disabilities and personality characteristics, in an effort to understand how learning environments can best adapt and foster mental health.