Carrie Conaway is the chief strategy and planning officer for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, with over 15 years of experience in improving systems through evidence. She leads the agency’s Office of Planning and Research, which helps the state and districts implement effective policy and programs and make effective resource use decisions to improve student outcomes. She has served as the agency’s principal investigator on numerous evaluations of state education programs and policy and has published two peer-reviewed articles on connecting research to practice. Her team also manages the agency’s strategic planning and implementation process and builds tools that help districts benchmark their performance and deploy their resources more effectively. She is president-elect of the Association for Education Finance and Policy and was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Board for Education Sciences in January 2017.