Susan Aud Pendergrass is the Senior Director for Research and Evaluation for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, where she oversees data collection and analysis, carries out a rigorous research program, and keeps track of all charter school-related numbers. Susan received a bachelor of science in business from the University of Colorado. And even though she spent the following year at the beach in southern California, which concerned her parents greatly, she eventually made her way to the D.C. area where she received a master of business administration from George Washington University and a doctorate in public policy from George Mason University.

Susan began researching charter schools with her dissertation on the competitive effects of Massachusetts charter schools and since then, she has conducted numerous studies on the fiscal impact of school choice legislation. She is currently a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and the James Madison Institute. Susan has also taught quantitative methods courses at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, at Johns Hopkins University, and at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. Prior to coming to the National Alliance, Susan was a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education during the Bush administration and a senior research scientist at the National Center for Education Statistics during the Obama administration.