Constance M. Yowell
Director of Education

Email: cyowell at macfound dot org

Connie M. Yowell is the Director of Education in the Foundation's Program on Human and Community Development. In this role, she focuses on grants relating to public education, and on the implications for education of young people's use of digital media.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her work included the study of reasons why Latino youth drop out of high school. Previously she worked as a Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy and Planning of the U.S. Department of Education. Before that Yowell was a Research Assistant at the University of California at San Francisco and at Stanford University.

Yowell earned her bachelor's degree from Yale and her Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Ben Stokes
Program Officer

Email: bstokes at macfound dot org

Ben Stokes is a program officer in the Digital Media & Learning area. Ben is a co-founder of Games For Change, a spin-off from the Serious Games Initiative that concentrates on advancing the use of digital games for positive societal change. Prior to this, he was the e-learning architect for Student Activist Community and a program manager overseeing digital learning projects at NetAid under the umbrella of Education for Global Citizenship. This work included the 2004 launch of the Peter Packet Game and Challenge in collaboration with Cisco Systems. He was the originator of NetAid's interactive VolunteerGuru guidance counselor and previously managed the developing world's preeminent Online Volunteering service in coordination with the United Nations Volunteers.

Before NetAid, Ben produced and edited virtual fieldtrips and online research products at Bigchalk/ProQuest, which serves more than 40,000 K-to-12 schools. He has taught in a number of contexts, including applied logic and wilderness survival for middle school students. Ben studied abroad in Senegal and graduated from Haverford College with a BA in physics and a minor in French literature. After graduating, Stokes worked with the CREA House to develop a living wage standard for the U.S.-Mexico border region.

Craig Wacker
Program Officer

Email: cwacker at macfound dot org

Craig Wacker is a Program Officer in Digital Media & Learning, a strategy of the Program on Human & Community Development.

Before joining the Foundation, Craig worked as an analyst in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington, DC, focusing on K-12 education policy. He has also served as a Congressional Fellow on Senator Edward Kennedy's staff; as a Research Associate at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and on secondment to the World Bank Institute (WBI) of the World Bank Group.

Craig has his Bachelors degree in History from Grinnell College and his Masters in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin.