Sakshee Chawla joined SHEEO as a senior policy analyst in June 2023. In her role, Sakshee manages projects and programs under the academic affairs and equity initiatives. Sakshee works on a breadth of projects including CUNY ASAP replication, direct admissions, student success, and student mental health and wellness. She partners with state higher education leaders to replicate and scale the City University of New York’s (CUNY) nationally recognized Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) and Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE) support program to increase college completion rates. She also works to promote improved student wellness through the development and implementation of state- and system-wide policies that advance student mental health care. Her research interests include student success, educational equity, and upward mobility.
Before joining SHEEO, Sakshee served as a research analyst and project manager on the Workforce of the Future (WoF) initiative at Brookings. She studied the demographic changes in the composition of labor unions and sought to understand whether unionization status is associated with worker happiness, job satisfaction, and productivity. As a part of her capstone project and thesis in graduate school, Sakshee partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education to assess the effect of the state’s test-optional admissions policies in reducing barriers and improving access to higher education, particularly for disadvantaged students. Sakshee’s work examining the vital role of community colleges in fostering economic growth was recently published in the book America’s Hidden Economic Engines: How Community Colleges Can Drive Shared Prosperity. Before graduate school, Sakshee worked at EAB where she studied topics including developmental education, faculty and staff mental health, social and emotional learning, as well as student learning loss.
Sakshee holds a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Arts in economics and psychology from Smith College. Outside of work, Sakshee enjoys traveling, reading, and testing new recipes both inside her kitchen and at local restaurants.
