Our Team

I direct Child Wellbeing and Education Research at The Consultation Center at Yale, where I also serve as a Senior Evaluation Consultant for YaleEval. My work encompasses three main themes. The first theme focuses on early childhood care and learning, examining factors and practices in childcare, educational, and home settings that impact young children’s development, learning, and pre-academic outcomes. The second theme centers on psychosocial wellbeing, particularly social and emotional learning (SEL), which involves acquiring intrapersonal and interpersonal life skills such as self-control and managing interpersonal conflict. The third theme addresses the sociopolitics of health and education, aiming to understand how sociopolitical factors shape the delivery of healthcare and education, and how these dynamics can both benefit and hinder positive outcomes for patients and students. Much of my work occurs in the context of partnerships between researchers and practitioners. One such project I direct is the Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER; http://peer.yale.edu), a research-practice partnership between three Connecticut communities. I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from University of California at Berkeley and conducted my predoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Upon completing this fellowship, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rush Neurobehavioral Center with funding from the William T. Grant Foundation. I completed my postdoctoral training at The Consultation Center at Yale within the Division of Prevention and Community Research at Yale School of Medicine with support from the Ford Foundation.

Joanna Meyer joined The Consultation Center in 2014 and currently serves as Assistant Director of Child Wellbeing and Education Research and Co-Director of the Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER). Meyer partners with education stakeholders to conduct research and evaluation studies that can inform the improvement of education systems and practices. Research interests include educational equity, early childhood education, the transition to K-12 education, social-emotional learning, family engagement, multilingual learners, STEM education, improvement science, and evaluation. Meyer is also committed to the dissemination of research findings to broad audiences, including educators, parents, education leaders, and policymakers, as well as researchers. Along with ten years in research-practice partnerships, Meyer brings ten years of experience as an educator to her work, a foundation that helps her to develop mutually-beneficial relationships among organizations and advocate for diverse stakeholder interests.Meyer’s teaching experience spans three school districts, a Job Corps center, and two experiential learning settings. As a high school STEM teacher, Meyer led her school’s decennial accreditation process with New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), and coordinated the design and pilot of six school-wide rubrics focused on interdepartmental learning expectations. Meyer also served as a fellow of the Maine Writing Project, a mentor teacher for the teacher preparation program at the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development, and a coordinating teacher for the NSF GK-12 program at the University of Maine's College of Engineering. In 2011, Meyer transitioned from the classroom to the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP), a NSF-funded collaboration between the University of Maine and 12 local school districts that focused on improving the science teaching and learning in secondary and post-secondary classrooms. At the MainePSP, Meyer provided professional development and leadership to teachers who were implementing one or more year-long MainePSP curricula in their grade 6-9 classrooms and engaged in STEM education research, roles that required balancing the needs and perspectives of researchers and practitioners. These experiences informed Meyer’s interest in school improvement, teacher leadership, and education research.

Now the Senior Director of Research for Child Care Aware® of America, Dr. Clare Waterman is a highly experienced researcher and evaluator. She has 15 years of experience leading studies that guide early care and education leaders and policymakers in improving outcomes for children, families, and communities. She brings extensive expertise in measurement, quantitative and qualitative research methods, policy analysis, mixed methods evaluations, research-practitioner partnerships, and technical assistance. Her research focuses on identifying strategies to improve early childhood education. Before joining Child Care Aware® of America, Waterman served as a Research Scientist for Education Development Center, where she co-founded the Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) and the Vermont Universal PreK Research Partnership and Early Childhood Workforce Development Research Alliance for REL Northeast & Islands at EDC. Prior to her role at EDC, Waterman served as a Research Specialist for Providence Public School District where she assisted school and district leaders in using data to inform policy and practice. In this role, Waterman worked closely with the district’s lowest performing schools to improve student learning. Waterman received an M.S.Ed. in Human Development, an M.S. in Quantitative Methods, and a Ph.D. in Policy, Research, Evaluation, and Measurement from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She was an IES Pre-doctoral Training Fellow from 2007–2011.

Suzanne Porco Clement is the Early Childhood Coordinator for Cooperative Educational Services (C.E.S.), the Regional Education Service Center for Southwestern Connecticut. Clement brings her deep knowledge of Connecticut’s early care and education system to her role on the PEER management team. A passionate advocate for high quality early childhood education experiences for children and families, Clement currently leads C.E.S. Professional Development Services' early childhood professional learning initiatives, serving public schools, community based early care and education programs and family child care programs. She joined C.E.S. in 2000 as the Family Coordinator at the Six-to-Six Magnet School, where she later held the titles of Family and Early Childhood Specialist and Early Childhood Coordinator. Clement’s work is driven by a commitment to advancing equity and building the capacity of early childhood professionals through training, coaching and consulting opportunities that promote reflection. The topics of these opportunities range in topics from child development, curriculum and supporting diverse learners to family engagement and program leadership. Clement has been engaged in a number of Connecticut Office of Early Childhood projects and initiatives, including contributing to the development of state tools, guidance documents, and programming focused on standards, assessment and core competencies. Clement is a leading partner in the Bridgeport Social Emotional Learning Initiative, alongside the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and a state partner on the "Variation in Quality Interventions (VIQI): Examining the Quality-Child Outcomes Relationship in Child Care and Early Education" research study conducted by MDRC. Clement's experience as a classroom educator has included teaching in an elementary public school and a community-based early childhood education program. Clement has served as an Adjunct Professor at Housatonic Community College.

Now retired from his role as an Early Childhood System Development Specialist at C.E.S., George A. Coleman was twice named Acting Commissioner of Education during his 24 year career in the Connecticut State Department of Education (SDE). He retired from the department in October, 2011. While at the SDE he also held the position of as Deputy Commissioner of Education, Associate Commissioner of Education, Chief of the Bureau of Curriculum and Teaching and Chief of the Bureau of Early Childhood Education. He is now a private educational contractor, working at the Cooperative Educational Services in Trumbull, Connecticut.Mr. Coleman joined the State Department of Education in 1987 as Kindergarten and Primary Grades Consultant. In that position he established the state’s rationale for full-day kindergarten investment and supported the department in procuring from the legislature the first state grant to support school districts in providing full-day kindergarten. He also drafted, on behalf of the State Department of Education, School Readiness legislation and funding level commitments, which is now greater than $200,000,000.Mr. Coleman holds graduate degrees in early childhood education and curriculum and instruction from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. He is also an adjunct professor of history at Western Connecticut State University.