Mary Clair Turner serves as a Portfolio Lead at OES where she works on projects focused on improving educational outcomes, access to social benefits, and payment integrity. Mary Clair was previously a Research Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab where she led an evaluation of a sports-based positive youth development program in Chicago Public Schools and a Technical Research Assistant at MDRC where she helped conduct large-scale randomized control trials of interventions in community colleges. Her research uses econometric and mixed methods techniques to examine how interventions that target the development of psychological skills or access to social resources impact decision making, particularly during educational transitions such as the transition from high school to college. She draws on insights from human development to focus on sensitive periods of development when interventions may induce the largest effects. She holds a BA in Math from Washington & Lee University and a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

Mary Clair Turner

Title

Behavioral Scientist - Portfolio Lead

Years active

2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Agency collaborators

General Services Administration, Housing and Urban Development, Treasury, Agriculture, Education