Senior Research Associate Jo Ann H. Izu has more than 20 years experience in policy research and evaluation, specializing in education and youth-related reforms, and emphasizing low income and/or culturally and linguistically diverse students. Currently, she serves as Data and Evaluation Coordinator for Safe Passages, an Urban Health Initiative site focused on Oakland children and youth, and Evaluator for a Yup'ik Indian Mathematics Curriculum Project and the Oakland Museum of California's family programs.

Izu has directed an evaluation of Los Angeles (CA) Unified School District's charter schools and a school-linked service evaluation and studies of state restructuring initiatives and has developed evaluation plans and assessment tools for schools, charter schools, and San Francisco Bay Area youth development programs. As a board member of the St. John's Educational Threshold Center in San Francisco — an organization that provides after-school tutoring, art, leadership development, and other activities for youth in the City's North Mission area - she has worked with staff and students of San Francisco's Beacon Schools (comprehensive, school-linked service efforts) and after-school and summer youth development programs.

She received a BEd in secondary education from the University of Hawaii, and an MA in sociology and a PhD in sociology of education from Stanford University.