Acting Executive Director
MOST Policy Initiative
Brittany Whitley (PhD) served as the inaugural Education & Workforce Development Policy Fellow at the MOST Policy Initiative and is currently transitioning into the Acting Executive Director role at MOST. Her work aims to institutionalize collaboration and trust between the scientific community and policymakers in Missouri and surrounding states. As a fellow she has worked with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers to connect science and policy in Missouri at the state and local levels by sharing nonpartisan research information about a range of education, workforce and tax-related issues.
Brittany earned her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Washington- Seattle and a BS in Neuroscience from Bucknell University. She also worked for several years as a research fellow at the National Institutes for Health. Although most of her academic training centered around lab-based research, it was her work as Policy Director for the UW Graduate and Professional Senate that inspired her to apply her research training to improve evidence-based policymaking in states.