Melissa Blankstein is a researcher on the Education Transformation team, where she leverages her mixed-methods background to lead a portfolio of work aimed at informing institutional strategy, student support services, and cross-sector collaboration in higher education. Her research focuses on student basic needs and institutional partnerships, with particular attention to college fluency, student navigation, and the bureaucratic barriers that hinder access and success. She is passionate about reimagining how institutions can better support students in advocating for their needs and how more responsive systems can be cultivated towards supporting student basic needs.

Melissa holds a bachelor of arts in applied psychology from Binghamton University with a minor in women, gender, and sexuality studies, and a master of arts in general psychology from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her master’s thesis examined how counterfactual thinking influences decisions to seek mental health care.