Team

Katie Roy serves as the Executive Director of the SPEND Initiative. She is a recognized national expert in education finance with nearly two decades of experience across the sector. Katie brings a unique perspective to SPEND, having viewed education finance through the lens of a local practitioner, a state-level policy leader, and a national expert.

Ten years ago, she founded the School + State Finance Project, a successful technical research and policy center that focuses on data-driven school funding analysis and improving fiscal transparency across the state of Connecticut. Prior to launching SPEND, she served as a Partner and General Counsel at Education Resource Strategies (ERS), a non-profit organization where she worked directly with state and district leaders in Texas and across the country on strategic resource allocation.

Her professional background also includes serving as a school district CFO, providing first-hand experience with the operational and technical realities of local education finance. As an attorney with deep expertise in education finance policy and data analytics, Katie currently serves on the Board of Directors for EdFund, further strengthening the strategic alignment between SPEND and the broader education data community.

Patrick Gibson serves as the Managing Director of Systems and Analytics. He is a technical and policy leader with over a decade of experience at the intersection of education finance data, state policy, and technology. Patrick co-launched the School + State Finance Project, where he most recently served as the Deputy Executive Director of Data, Policy & Special Projects.

In his career, Patrick has specialized in using data to drive large-scale state policy reform. He served as a lead researcher and policy expert in the design and implementation of Connecticut’s historic education funding increase in 2023 and the initial state formula reform in 2017. His expertise includes managing complex financial modeling for state-level legislative proposals and spearheading data visualization strategies that have reached hundreds of thousands of users.

Beyond state policy, Patrick has led technical assistance practices for school districts and nonprofits, redesigning school allocation models and implementing cloud-based data systems to improve organizational efficiency and transparency. Patrick holds a Master of Science in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College.

Mauro Ampie serves as Senior Associate Data Scientist for the SPEND Initiative. He comes to SPEND with over five years of experience in the education finance sector, specializing in the technical steps needed to transform raw data files into standardized datasets for comparisons across districts and states. He brings to SPEND a deep commitment to helping the education research community derive the most value possible from education finance data.

In 2020 Mauro started his professional career at Education Resource Strategies (ERS), where he supported schools, districts, and states in utilizing analytics for data-driven decision making. While at ERS he led the company’s adoption of R as the analytic tool for its main service lines: financial benchmarking, course schedule, and human capital. Additionally, he co-founded the Data Strategy and Innovation practice area and built the company’s first machine learning model for financial coding.

Mauro has a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and Psychology from the University of Chicago and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Analytics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.