Alisa Cunningham
Senior Research and Evaluation Analyst, NASFAA
Alisa Federico Cunningham is the senior research and evaluation analyst at NASFAA, where she leads key components of NASFAA’s membership-focused research, internal evaluations, data analysis, and practitioner-facing resources. Cunningham has more than 25 years of experience conducting research and evaluation projects on a broad array of topics, including financial aid, access and success for historically marginalized students, higher education financing, and measures of community college success. She has extensive experience with federal and other datasets, in addition to survey and qualitative analyses. She has also worked with dozens of higher education institutions to improve their capacity for internal data analysis and strategic finance. Before NASFAA, Cunningham was an independent consultant assisting associations, institutions, and other partners with research and evaluation projects. Prior to that, she was the senior advisor and director of research and evaluation at Higher Ed Insight and vice president for research at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. She was appointed to the Department of Education’s Committee on Measures of Student Success in 2010-2011 and was a member of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC).