Marisol Cuellar Mejia, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Higher Education Center, focuses her research on community college students and their path toward a four-year degree. Her recent projects have examined statewide reforms to developmental education, recent trends and barriers to transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges, and the economic returns of a college degree. She is a member of the PPIC Economic Policy Center, where she studies labor-market trends. Her other areas of expertise include housing in California and demographic trends. Before joining PPIC, she worked at Colombia’s National Association of Financial Institutions as an economic analyst, concentrating on issues related to the manufacturing sector and small businesses. She has also conducted agricultural and commodity market research for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Columbia and the National Federation of Oil Palm Growers of Colombia. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Universidad del Rosario and a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis.