Mauriell H. Amechi, Ph.D.
Social Scientist, Professor, and Consultant in VA
Dr. Mauriell Amechi is a foster care advocate, social scientist, professor, consultant, and keynote speaker committed to educational equity, especially improving postsecondary education outcomes and opportunities for marginalized learners. He is also the Founder of Foster Youth Empowered LLC, and a board member at Foster Progress. Amechi's scholarship centers on higher education policy and research, emphasizing access and educational equity, diversity and social justice, college readiness, student persistence, and completion for historically underserved and underrepresented student populations. His early research seeks to influence public policy and practice by documenting the experiences and trajectories of youth and young adults aging out of foster care, and the endless roadblocks they often face to obtain a postsecondary degree in higher education.
Amechi's peer-reviewed journal publications appear in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, Journal of African American Males in Education, and the Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (JFYSIT), to name a few. His public scholarship has been featured in venues such as The Education Trust and Third Way. In addition to serving on editorial boards for JFYESIT and the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, he remains active in professional associations, namely the American Educational Research Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, NASPA, and ACPA. Amechi is also affiliate faculty at the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Visiting Scholar at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Born and raised in Chicago, the West Side native is a proud alumnus of Chicago Public Schools. Amechi received his B.A. with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and M.A. from Ohio State University. He also holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
He enjoys international/domestic travel, music, sports, cycling, mentoring, and performing arts in his free time.