Alycia Hardy is a senior policy analyst with the child care and early education team at CLASP. She works with quantitative and qualitative federal and state data to help strengthen policies that support children, families, and the child care workforce. Alycia strives to center racial equity and intersectionality as the driving force in her work. She leads and supports developing policy recommendations, conducting research, and performing data analyses to advocate for systemic changes related to access, wages, quality, and affordability. She has expertise in technical assistance, racial equity, federal child care policy, and data analysis. As a former community representative for the District of Columbia Public School’s Head Start parent policy council, Alycia advocated for equitable and accessible school and wraparound support services for Head Start families. Prior to joining CLASP, she served as the data collection and evaluation manager, to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Magnet School Assistance Program (MSAP). In her role, she used administrative and program outcome data to tailor technical assistance needs for grantee school districts, with a focus on increasing magnet school diversity, accessibility, and quality. Additionally, she was the data assistant at Communities In Schools, where she supported analyses of qualitative and quantitative student, school, and district data to help meet the needs of students through integrated community resources. Alycia received her bachelor of arts degree in political science from Morgan State University and her master of public administration degree from American University.