PPA would like to introduce two new team members, Dr. Rebecca Frausel and Calandra Reichel. They are excellent additions to the PPA team. You can find their professional bios, here. Below, learn more about their inspiration, achievements, and what drives their work.
Dr. Rebecca Frausel
Dr. Frausel comes to PPA with experience as an applied researcher and program evaluator with strong knowledge of education systems and quantitative methods. A developmental psychologist by training, she has deep subject-matter expertise in cognitive development, language development, and early childhood education. She has a Ph.D. and an M.A. in comparative human development from the University of Chicago. She joins PPA as a senior research associate.
Dr. Frausel is extremely proud of her work with Narrative 4, a nonprofit focused on creating connections, enhancing empathy, and breaking down barriers through personal storytelling. Through research supported by multiple grants, she conducted a quasi-experimental study of Narrative 4’s key program, the Story Exchange, at an urban high school in New York City, measuring students’ feelings of empathy and school climate.[1] She went on to continue this exploration around the impact of personal stories as a research assistant professor at Penn State Behrend. You can learn more about the Story Exchange process here.
To contact or learn more about Dr. Frausel’s, see her bio.
Calandra Reichel
Ms. Reichel comes to PPA as a skilled coordinator, researcher, and facilitator with strong experience in qualitative data collection and analysis, survey design, and reporting. She brings a background of designing and implementing surveys, logic models, and data-collection protocols. She has an M.A. and B.A. from Michigan State University. Both degrees are in social work, with her M.A. having a concentration in organizational and community leadership. She joins PPA as a Research Associate I.
Ms. Reichel’s background as a social worker inspires her to approach her work with a critical, systems-level perspective. Her interest in policy was instilled at a young age by her father (an environmental attorney), and it grew through her work with Michigan State University’s Adolescent Diversion Program (ADP), where she observed the positive impact responsive public policy and intentional program development and evaluation could have on the lives of individuals involved within the juvenile justice system.
To contact or learn more about Ms. Reichel, see her bio.
[1] Rebecca Frausel, Gabriel Velez, Tasneem Mandviwala, and Jennifer Kubota, “Promoting empathy in adolescents: An exploratory study of the Story Exchange,” Journal of Character Education 18, no. 1, 2022: 31–49.