In her role as Director of Planning and Data Management at Chicago Public Schools, Dr. Vargas leads a team of analysts to evaluate and synthesize data enrollment data, school choice patterns, and demographic trends to help inform district planning. Before this role, Dr. Vargas oversaw the creation of performance measures for 600+ district and charter schools. Her belief in data as a root for informed policy draws from her training as an academic researcher at Northwestern University, where she received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience. While at NU, Dr. Vargas received the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation in 2012 and was selected as Pacific Standard’s “Top 30 Thinkers Under 30” in 2015 for her research on memory and sleep. Dr. Vargas was a member of the “Forbes 30 Under Thirty” class of 2016 in the Science category. As a first-generation college student and daughter of Mexican immigrants, Dr. Vargas credits her success to her parents, who nurtured her innate curiosity and methodical work ethic to solve complex problems. Outside of her professional life, Dr. Vargas finds happiness indulging in fiction books by women authors, particularly those with a touch of wit and an engaging plot.