Clare Waterman is a principal research associate in the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute. She leads and supports various projects focused on child care and early education (CCEE) supply, sustainability, and access. Her primary research interests are in policies that support CCEE supply during traditional and nontraditional hours, CCEE access, and universal prekindergarten. Her preferred approach to her work is through a researcher-practitioner partnership framework.

Before joining Urban, Waterman was the senior director of research at Child Care Aware of America and previously was a research scientist at Education Development Center and a research specialist for the Providence Public School Department. She has formerly served on the school board in her community and on various steering committees, including for the National Network of Education Research Practice Partnerships.

She has authored or coauthored numerous peer-reviewed publications, invited chapters, and policy reports and been invited to present her work to the Vermont legislature on numerous occasions. Her work is published in such journals as Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Princeton’s Future of Children.

Waterman obtained her BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado Boulder and her MSEd in human development, MS in quantitative methods, and PhD in policy research, evaluation, and measurement from the University of Pennsylvania. She was an Institute of Education Sciences predoctoral training fellow from 2007 to 2011.

She is an adjunct-associate professor at St. John’s University, where she teaches applied research methods.