Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is Associate Provost and Senior Advisor to the President for Academic Excellence at the University of Florida. She is on leave from Northwestern University where she is Margaret Walker Alexander Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy, and faculty co-director of the Early Childhood Research Alliance of Chicago.

She is an economist who studies policies aimed at improving the lives of children in poverty, including education, health, and income support policies. Her work traces the impact of major public policies such as the Food Stamp Program, school finance reform, and early childhood education on children’s long-term outcomes. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a research associate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and the National Academy of Social Insurance, and serves on the boards of directors of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Food Research and Action Center, and Start Early.