Zack Mabel is a research professor and interim director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), where he leads the Center’s research agenda and organizational strategy. He joined CEW as a research professor in 2021 and has served as director of research since 2024.
For nearly two decades, Zack has studied the connections between education and the labor market, with a focus on advancing opportunity, equity, and upward mobility. Before joining CEW, he was a policy research scientist at the College Board, where he conducted and published research on academic preparation, postsecondary investment, and college affordability.
Earlier in his career, Zack was a founding member of the research team at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and research manager to Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty member Bridget Terry Long. At Harvard, he led research partnerships with large urban school districts and helped implement and evaluate an experimental intervention to simplify the college financial aid application process. He later led a five-year evaluation, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, of a randomized intervention designed to help students at broad-access institutions across three state postsecondary systems complete the final steps toward graduation. Zack began his career in the nonprofit sector, developing workforce development, economic development, and asset-building programs for low-wage workers.
Zack’s research has appeared in leading public policy and education journals, including the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Education Finance & Policy, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and other national media outlets.
Zack earned a BA from Brandeis University, an MPP from the University of Michigan, and a doctorate in quantitative policy analysis from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.