Raised in Portland, Oregon, Liz stumbled into education policy more than 20 years ago. In 2003, she signed up as a volunteer summer-school teacher in DC’s Anacostia neighborhood. She then changed her career plans and never looked back.

Liz has worked as an analyst and advisor for foundations, districts, and nonprofit organizations in the K-12 education space, first at the District of Columbia Public Schools’ Office of Data and Accountability and then at the Office of the State Superintendent in the District of Columbia. She has also worked at FutureEd at Georgetown University, Whiteboard Advisors, the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness, the Urban Institute, and was a strategic data fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. She currently serves on the Strategic Data Project Alumni Advisory Board and the Maryland READS Expert Advisory Delegation; she previously served on the board of Sela Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. Liz is the author of The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives (Harvard Education Press, September 2025).

Cohen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude and holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with her husband and three children.