Elise Miller McNeely joined Ithaka S+R in November 2023 as a senior program manager in Educational Transformation. She has worked in higher education policy and research for several decades for a variety of organizations including the National Center for Education Statistics, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. She most recently worked for the Tennessee State Collaborative for Reforming Education (SCORE) where she oversaw the organization’s data strategy for better use of longitudinal education and workforce data in Tennessee.

Elise earned a master’s degree in higher education administration at the University of Pennsylvania and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The Catholic University of America, where she received her BA in politics. She grew up in Nashville, TN, with six siblings, and after living in Washington, DC, for most of her career, returned to Nashville in 2021. She lives there now with her husband, Jason, and has a stepson Lander and three cats, Cheddar, Jerry, and TaterBob.