Adam Gamoran

President, William T. Grant Foundation

Adam provides leadership for the Foundation’s strategic direction and shapes our agenda and tactics. He partners with the Board of Trustees to advance our mission and objectives. He came to the Foundation in 2013 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he held the John D. MacArthur Chair in Sociology and Educational Policy Studies. In a research career spanning three decades, Adam conducted a wide range of studies focusing on inequality in education and school reform.

Among his major works were a series of studies on tracking and ability grouping that identified consequences for student achievement and revealed the mechanisms through which those consequences occurred. Subsequent studies focused on interventions to improve performance and reduce learning gaps, including a professional development program to improve elementary teaching and learning in Los Angeles, and a family engagement program to boost children’s academic and social outcomes by strengthening relationships among families and between families and schools in San Antonio and Phoenix. Both of these studies involved large-scale cluster-randomized trials.

His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, as well as by the Spencer and William T. Grant Foundations. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2014 and was twice appointed by President Obama to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences.

Adam earned his Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago.