Antoinette J. Waller

Antoinette is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland. She earned her B.S. in psychology and criminal justice from Virginia Commonwealth University, and her M.S. in family, youth, and community sciences from the University of Florida. She is a proud first gen scholar whose research focuses on racial and gender equity, higher education policy, and redressing inequities in educational opportunity and success. Her dissertation specifically examines how Black girls and women's identity and educational experiences influence their college and career trajectories. Her work aims to emphasize the importance of structural, historical, and cultural contexts as well as the interactions among these contexts in education research and policy.

Antoinette has previously served as a graduate student senator, on the executive committee of the UMD senate, and as vice president of the college of education’s graduate student organization. She also served two terms as the secretary/historian of the American Educational Research Association’s Graduate Student Council (AERA GSC). Currently, she is an inaugural Thurgood Marshall Research Fellow at The Institute for Public Leadership at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.