David Woo is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. Before starting his doctoral studies, he worked as a high school English teacher on Chicago’s south side for six years. While working as a teacher and grade level lead, he grew interested in the influence of school leadership and policy on educational outcomes for students of color and students from low-income families. To gain the theoretical foundations and quantitative research methods he would need to interrogate the ways that school leaders can support or hinder the learning of students from marginalized communities, he completed an M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership with a concentration in Education Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago before pursuing a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt. His research centers on understanding how education policy and research can prepare and support school leaders to be effective instructional leaders and organization managers. Some of his current research estimates the impact of assistant principals on school culture, the relationship between prior work experiences on early career principal performance, and the factors that influence collective bargaining in the charter school context. David has been recognized as an emerging scholar by AERA’s Law and Education SIG, is a Jackson Scholar, and a Clark Scholar. He has published articles in Educational Administration Quarterly and Teachers College Record.