Tania (Nguyen) LaViolet

Tania LaViolet is a director at the College Excellence Program, where she oversees the program’s Research & Innovation team. Her portfolio includes the project teams for the American Talent Initiative, Tracking Transfer and Transfer Playbook research, state-based transfer engagement pilots, program evaluation, and the research agendas for major CEP initiatives like the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence and Unlocking Opportunity.

She is an author of several community college transfer research reports, including the 2024 companion Tracking Transfer reports, Community College and Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment. She is the lead author of The Talent Blind Spot: The Case for Increasing Community College Transfer to High Graduation Rate Institutions. Before joining Aspen, Tania led best-practice research at the Education Advisory Board, where she published work on timely degree completion and strategic allocation of financial aid to encourage persistence of students from low-income backgrounds. Tania holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and graduated with a B.Sc. in biology from Mount Allison University.