Gina Johnson, PhD
Principal & Cofounder | gina@dataempoweredconsulting.com
Gina Johnson focuses on improving knowledge management and data-informed decision making in postsecondary education through coaching and co-designing frameworks that empower organizational leaders to reimagine their data and analytics efforts and enhance their knowledge management capacities at scale. Her work has helped organizations and institutions rethink how they manage data, information, and knowledge.
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Previously, Gina served as a Senior Associate at NCHEMS, where she assisted intermediary organizations envision knowledge management and co-developed practical frameworks to actualize those visions. While serving as the Assistant Executive Director for Partnerships & Membership at the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), Gina empowered data and analytics professionals to reimagine and enhance their capacities to engage in sophisticated data-informed decision making. She developed strategic partnerships for the IR/IE community, including collaborative work with EDUCAUSE and NACUBO, bringing together IT, Business and Finance, and IR/IE leaders to engage in collective institutional analytics improvements. Much of Gina's work has focused on the potential for data-empowered storytelling to decrease equity gaps at minority-serving institutions and for military-connected students.
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Gina has over 25 years of experience in the field of education, including consulting, association management, institutional research leadership, teaching, and policy analysis. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, with a focus on Quantitative Methods in Education, from the University of Minnesota, and holds an M.A. from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. from Winona State University. When not focused on postsecondary education, her family, her Siberian huskies, and her garden, Gina volunteers in the Herb Guild and therapeutic horticulture programs at the Denver Botanic Gardens, writes book reviews for the Land Stewardship Letter, and engages as a Tambien member of The GrowHaus.
Jonathan Gagliardi, PhD
Principal & Cofounder | jonathan@dataempoweredconsulting.com
Jonathan Gagliardi currently serves as the inaugural Vice President for Economic Mobility and Social Impact at Northern Arizona University where he is responsible for the design and creation of a new university system. Previously, as Assistant Vice Chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY), Jonathan led the development and implementation of CUNY's strategic plan. Prior to this, Jonathan served as the Assistant Vice President of Strategy, Policy, and Analytics, and Chief of Staff at Herbert H. Lehman College, where he oversaw the organization of the colleges data assets and amplification of a culture of evidence on matters related to enrollment management, student success, finance, research and innovation, and accreditation.
As a scholar-practitioner, Dr. Gagliardi's work has focused on large-scale organizational transformation, and the intersection of data and analytics and senior college leadership. At the American Council on Education, Jonathan helped lead the Center for Policy Research and Strategy with an emphasis on providing college and university presidents with tools to help create more dynamic and resilient colleges. As Deputy Director of the National Association of System Heads, Dr. Gagliardi co-founded Taking Student Success to Scale, a groundbreaking initiative recognized by President Barack Obama for its innovative approach to leveraging systems.
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Jonathan is a co-author of The Analytics Revolution in Higher Education: Big Data, Organizational Learning, and Student Success (2018, Stylus); Higher Education Systems Redesigned: From Perpetuation to Innovation to Student Success (2022, SUNY), and the forthcoming How Colleges Use Data (2022, JHU). Dr. Gagliardi is regularly quoted by both higher education and mainstream media outlets about critical issues in higher education.
