Joel is interested in applying information technology to understand and address complex social problems, and to help others achieve their goals.  Joel got his start in technology in the mid-1980s working on educational software and natural language understanding. In the first class of Cognitive Science majors at UCLA, and later, as a graduate student in Cognitive Psychology there, he studied artificial intelligence and machine learning well before it was mainstream technology.  He taught research methods and statistics and mentored undergraduate students in the sciences.  He led the UCLA Graduate Mentor Program, which served historically underrepresented students.  He transformed the way in which program participants were tracked in order to improve efficiency and demonstrate program effectiveness with a system he designed and implemented.

Before coming to the Center, he brought his expertise to other UCLA student services programs, to community-based literacy and adult education programs throughout the country, and to correctional rehabilitative programs in California.  Joel left UCLA to join a startup, LiteracyPro Systems.  The systems he designed are still in use today, and help hundreds of local and 16 state educational agencies track millions of students and manage and improve their programs.  He subsequently joined the Contra Costa County Office of Education and worked at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations on systems to track its correctional rehabilitation programs in the state.

Under Joel’s applied technology vision and leadership, The Center is developing its systems to deliver, track, and improve program effectiveness.

Joel has a Master’s in Psychology from UCLA and a Master’s in Information Systems/Health Care Informatics from Drexel University.