Lydia joined Edge in 2015 and has worked with a variety of for-profit, nonprofit, and government clients including Citrix, The National PTA, The National Association of School Boards of Education, and the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. She is highly skilled in study design, implementation, and analysis for both qualitative and quantitative research efforts. In addition to analytical functions, Lydia assists Edge’s Field Department with project management, quality control, and vendor relations.
Lydia specializes in education research and has supported several projects specifically in education policy and testing. These efforts include some of the most pressing issues in education today, including an intensive exploration of parents who opt their children out of year-end assessments and studies to determine how best to communicate key elements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to parents.
Prior to joining Edge, Lydia worked as a Special Education Teacher and Case Manager at a behavioral health facility for children and adolescents, where she collaborated closely with school personnel at local public and private schools. Lydia has also worked as an elementary school teacher at a charter school in Philadelphia and has experience conducting research with children through the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University and the Child Development Lab at Franklin & Marshall College.
Lydia holds a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish from Franklin & Marshall College where she conducted extensive social science research on children’s cognitive development, specifically around artifact concepts. Her research that compared data from social media, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and face-to-face behavioral testing can be found in Computers and Human Behavior. Lydia lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband and their cat.
