Professional Biography
Afi Wiggins has dedicated a 20+ year career to serving students across the K12 and postsecondary education spectrum. At the beginning of her career, she was an elementary teacher and a high school assistant principal. After falling in love with statistics and evaluation, she embarked on a journey as a research methodologist, statistician, and evaluator of myriad initiatives in K-16 education, education policy, and health. Over the past five years, Afi has served in various senior leadership positions focused on envisioning and operationalizing the symbiotic relationship between organizational strategy and impact in service of transforming education systems to create and maintain equitable conditions for student success.
Afi currently serves as managing director of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In her role, she leads the development and implementation of comprehensive, coherent, and evidence-based strategies for equity-minded systemic and structural reform that positively impact students in the K12, postsecondary education, and high school-to-college transition spaces. Afi establishes and operationalizes long-term strategic goals and priorities in programmatic, partnership, and philanthropic development. Afi directs the day-to-day mobilization of the Center’s personnel and programs to achieve the strategic goals. She supervises and supports directors who lead teams enacting a portfolio of initiatives. Afi leads the Center’s resource development efforts, including overseeing proposal development, and serving as the primary contact to funders to sustain the Center’s annual operating budget.
Prior to serving as interim director, Afi was the director of evaluation and research and, most recently, the director of strategy and impact. In her role as the director of strategy and impact, Afi managed the Center’s evaluation and impact initiatives and oversaw program management and resource development. As the director of evaluation and research, she led the development of comprehensive and coherent strategies for understanding and communicating the Center’s progress and impact in achieving its strategic goals. Assessing the quality, efficacy, and impact of the Center’s work, Afi implemented evaluation and research designs that promoted equity.
Afi is a transformative leader, strategic thought partner, and consummate educator. She has effectively enculturated people and transformed organizational systems to ground decisions and actions in appropriate, meaningful, and impactful evidence.