Nikki Edgecombe, PhD

Vice President of Impact Nikki Edgecombe, Ph.D., leads ECMC Foundation’s advocacy and impact measurement strategy. In this role, Nikki oversees activities to drive meaningful progress in national and state-level public policy and leverage internal and external communications, research, and ongoing learning and evaluation efforts to measure impact.

Before joining ECMC Foundation, Nikki served as a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and honorary research professor in the Education Policy and Social Analysis department at Teachers College, Columbia University. At CCRC, she spent 16 years as a member of the leadership team and oversaw research portfolios on topics including developmental education, workforce development, adult education, teaching and learning, multilingual learners and higher education finance, among others. Nikki was the principal investigator for the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness and a co-principal investigator for the Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative, both research and development centers for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Nikki worked previously at J.P. Morgan, where she conducted research in the commodities and equity research divisions of the investment bank. Prior to J.P. Morgan, she was a researcher at the Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago.

Nikki earned her doctorate and master’s degrees in education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies–Economics from Columbia University.

Why are you working at ECMC Foundation and committed to working toward improving higher education for underserved learners?

I believe in the potential for high-quality postsecondary education and training to open doors to economic mobility for large numbers of underserved learners and their families. ECMC Foundation is squarely focused on realizing this potential, and I am proud to contribute to this effort.