Connie Yowell is the Director of Education for U.S. Programs, where she oversees a $85 million program on Digital Media and Learning, one of the first philanthropic efforts in the country to systematically explore the impact of digital media on young people and implications for the future of learning.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, publishing scholarly work that examined the complex interplay among young people’s emerging identity, their social context and achievement. Her research integrated the fields of adolescent psychological development and organization change to address the problem of high school dropout among immigrant students in the United States. Yowell briefly served as Policy Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, and has worked closely with teachers and administrators to develop and implement literacy curricula for Latino youth, and as evaluator and program coordinator for youth development programs in New York City.
Yowell received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, an award to support scholars seeking to bridge research and practice, under which she worked with the National Writing Project to develop approaches that integrate web 2.0 technologies into the social practices of teachers.
Yowell earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale, and her PhD from Stanford University.
An-Me Chung Associate Director of Education
Email: achung at macfound dot org
An-Me Chung is the Associate Director of Education for U.S. Programs. In this role, she focuses on grants relating to public education, and the implications for education of young people’s use of digital media.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Chung was the education program officer at the C.S. Mott Foundation where she partnered with the U.S. Department of Education and sought to provide optimum opportunities for academic support and enrichment for young people to learn and develop beyond the classroom. Previously, she was the Associate Director at the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at the Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College. There, she worked with the Corporation for National and Community Service and the U.S. Department of Education, and directed the Save the Children Out-of-School Time Rural Initiative.
Chung is vice-chair of the board of Grantmakers for Education, and previously served on the New Mexico Integrated School Services Initiative advisory board, the Citizen Schools National Education Policy advisory board, The Governor’s Voices for Action Poverty Summit advisory committee in Michigan, the Mass2020 Expanding Learning Time advisory board, and the National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning steering committee member, and was chair of Bridges to the Future Genesys County advisory board
Chung holds a B.S. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. from Yale University. She completed a post-doctorate fellowship at Columbia University.
Jennifer J. Humke Program Officer, Digital Media and Learning
Email: jhumke at macfound dot org
Jennifer Humke is the Foundation’s Program Officer for Digital Media and Learning. She joined the Digital Media and Learning Program in January 2012 after nine years in the Foundation’s Public Affairs office, where she served as Associate Director. In that position, she provided communications support to the Foundation’s grantmaking programs and was responsible for the Foundation’s online profile. She joined MacArthur in 2002 after three years with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she helped manage the opening of and garner media attention for major Museum exhibits, including Flight and Rescue and The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk. Prior to that, Jennifer worked for a human rights organization in Kampala, Uganda, helping to run a program that trained human rights activists how to identify and document gender-specific human rights abuses in war. She worked on one of the first primary research reports on women and war in Uganda.
Jennifer has an M.A. in international affairs and journalism from The American University and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Communications Network, a national nonprofit helping to foster the use of strategic communications in philanthropy.
Phone: (312) 726-8000