Amanda Lu is a PhD Student in Education Policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She is a recipient of the Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering and the Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Training Fellowship. Her research focuses on the governance of charter schools and other school choice programs and seeks to understand how school choice changes political participation and facilitates the rise of new power structures and organizations in urban school systems. She employs quantitative and qualitative methodological tools from economics, sociology, and political science.

Before graduate school, Amanda was a 2011 Teach for America Corps Member in New Orleans, LA where she taught high school math and served as the college counselor at Edna Karr High School. She earned a joint masters in Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies from the Stanford GSE and MPP from the Stanford Public Policy Program in 2017, and a bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard College in 2011.