Sofia Dueñas is a second-year doctoral student in Sociology. She is affiliated with the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO) and a Burns Fellow in the Program for Interdisciplinary Education Research (ND PIER). She received her B.A. in Sociology & Education from Whittier College and her M.A. in Urban Education from Loyola Marymount University. Sofia began her career as an elementary school teacher in downtown Los Angeles. She is passionate about community-engaged scholarship and QuantCrit (Quantitative Critical Race Theory). Her current research interests are primarily centered around education policy and how educational experiences vary across racial and socioeconomic groups.

Aastha Rajan is a PhD candidate in Economics at Northwestern University. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In this position, she supported the monetary policy work of the labor markets group and analyzed the cyclicality of labor market indicators and the rising wage inequality in the US. She also co-authored research projects studying the persistent economic impact of the Great Migration, and the consumption effect of the Economic Impact Payments. Her research interests are broadly in areas of labor and public economics. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the impact of administrative burden and social stigma on the welfare effects of social safety net programs in the US. Aastha earned her Bachelor of Science in Economics, with a specialization in quantitative methods, from Texas A&M University.