Prior to stepping into the role of executive director, Francisco served as EF+Math’s founding deputy program director, working closely with founding Program Director Melina Uncapher to launch EF+Math, drive overall program strategy and implementation, and manage EF+Math’s portfolio of research and development (R&D) teams.
An engineer by training, Francisco brought to EF+Math expertise in working collaboratively at the intersection of research, education practice, and technology development to improve learning outcomes. Prior to joining EF+Math, Francisco was chief research officer at Digital Promise, where she led the development of communication methods for learning sciences research and supervised dozens of pilot studies of education technology products. At Digital Promise, Francisco also developed continuous improvement methods to support schools in implementing instructional coaching, and she was co-principal investigator on a $15 million Department of Education–funded effort to scale a support system for early-literacy professionals.
Prior to joining Digital Promise, Francisco worked in biomedical R&D, where she collaborated across disciplines to develop and test innovative biomaterials. She earned her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. from Duke University.