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.

Annie Maselli serves as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Field Engagement at the SPEND Initiative. She is an education policy and data infrastructure leader with more than a decade of experience across the federal government, higher education, and the nonprofit sector, and brings to SPEND deep expertise in school finance data and federal statistical systems.

Most recently, Annie served as a Statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), where she advanced the Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program, oversaw a $22M+ contract portfolio, and launched a multi-state community of practice with State Education Agencies. She has also worked as an independent consultant advising organizations on multi-state education datasets and data strategy, and conducted research on school finance and spatial equity at Pennsylvania State University.

Annie holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Education Policy Studies from Pennsylvania State University, a Master of Education from Vanderbilt University, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of the South.

Sean Gill serves as Principal, State Partnerships and External Affairs at the SPEND Initiative. He oversees the communications strategy, ensuring work is relevant and responsive to emerging needs and accessible to researchers, analysts, and policymakers. He brings nearly two decades of experience in education policy, research, and management consulting.

Most recently, Sean served as Manager of K-12 Education Services at Resultant, a data and technology consulting firm, where he directed engagements with state education agencies (SEAs) and school districts across the country. His leadership helped SEAs prioritize and track spending of federal pandemic relief dollars, evaluate digital access/literacy investments, and improve state data systems. Prior to consulting, he served as a research analyst at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, leading projects focused on school finance, special education, personalized learning, and district-charter collaboration. He began his career at the California State Auditor’s Office conducting legislative audits and program evaluations and subsequently provided finance-related research and policy support for an education advocacy organization.

Sean holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of California, Davis and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Pepperdine University.

Ahmed Selmi supports the SPEND Initiative as the Machine Learning Engineer. He brings nearly a decade of experience building AI products, data platforms, and engineering teams across startup and scale-up environments.

Ahmed has led cross-functional teams across machine learning, backend engineering, data engineering, and cloud infrastructure. His work includes building AI tutoring platforms, real-time voice AI systems, RAG and knowledge graph architectures, and company-wide data platforms that help organizations turn complex information into usable products and workflows.

With a background spanning ML engineering, data platforms, and engineering leadership, Ahmed brings a practical perspective on how AI and modern software systems can improve decision-making, simplify complex processes, and support mission-driven teams as they scale.

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.

Josie Benítez serves as the Senior Data & Systems Analyst for the SPEND Initiative. She is a research scientist and data analyst with over nine years of experience building data systems across the research, education, and nonprofit sectors, with a focus on making analytical infrastructure reproducible, well-documented, and accessible to the teams who use it.

Prior to joining SPEND, Josie served as a data scientist at the National Education Opportunity Network (NEON), where she redesigned core aspects of the organization’s analytical infrastructure and introduced NLP-powered analyses for evaluating stakeholder feedback and program performance. At New York University, she contributed to longitudinal and experimental cognitive and behavioral research across developmental and educational settings. Her doctoral research used large language models and natural language processing to study how patterns in adult behavior and speech predict developmental outcomes in children.

Josie holds a Ph.D. in Human Cognition and a Master’s degree in Quantitative Methods from New York University, where she was a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from Franklin & Marshall College as a Posse Foundation Leadership Scholar.