About MDRC
Molina has over 20 years of experience providing technical and operational assistance to workforce development service providers, and has worked at MDRC for 17 years on numerous workforce development evaluations. She is director of MDRC’s Economic Mobility, Housing, and Communities, and co-directs the MDRC Center for Effective Career and Technical Education. She is currently the project director for WorkAdvance, a multisite demonstration project funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service through the Social Innovation Fund. WorkAdvance is a career advancement demonstration with a sector focus. It builds on, among other evaluations, the national Work Advancement and Support Center Demonstration (WASC), a multisite effort for which Molina served as the project director. The goal of WASC was to improve substantially the earnings and overall income of low-wage workers by facilitating access to work support and by helping workers to advance in the labor market. In addition to WorkAdvance, Molina works on the national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training Pilot Project evaluation, a 10-state evaluation funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, and on the national Workforce Investment Act Evaluation of Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs, a 30-site evaluation funded by the U.S. Department of Labor. In both studies MDRC is serving as a subcontractor to Mathematica Policy Research. In early 2000, Molina was a member of the national Employment Retention and Advancement evaluation, for which she helped three Oregon sites develop and implement their pre- and postemployment interventions. Previously she was the project director of the Neighborhood Jobs Initiative, an employment saturation initiative focused on increasing employment rates in five low-income neighborhoods. Outside of Economic Mobility, Housing, and Communities, Molina worked on the national Head Start CARES evaluation, a study designed to test the effects of social-emotional program enhancements in Head Start settings across the country. She has also worked on the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start CARES implementation evaluation and the Foundations of Learning evaluation. Molina works for MDRC from her home base in the Chicago area. She holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a BA in anthropology from Pomona College.
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MDRC Publications
ToolkitA Toolkit for SNAP E&T Programs
September, 2021This toolkit offers state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) agencies a systematic approach—with accompanying examples and worksheets—for employing human-centered design and behavioral science to address problems that may be limiting engagement and participation in SNAP Employment and Training programs.
Issue FocusMay, 2021The pandemic has been especially hard on recent high school graduates. MDRC is partnering with several cities to connect 2020 and 2021 graduates to high-quality programs and coaching and counseling resources that can guide them to educational and workforce opportunities that match their interests.
Issue FocusAn Interview with Bridgette Gray
May, 2020Bridgette Gray, chief impact officer at the sector-based training and career advancement program Per Scholas, shares tips for retooling in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. The organization successfully transitioned 521 students and 200 staff members to a virtual training environment over a single, remarkable week in March 2020.
Issue FocusTips to Keep Participants Coming Back for More
September, 2019In just seven seconds, most people form a first impression. For program participants, this initial encounter can mean the difference between signing up for services – or walking away. The September 2019 In Practice blog post offers tips for programs seeking to have an impact from the get-go.
Issue FocusUsing Data to Analyze Enrollment Drop-Off
August, 2019The August 2019 In Practice blog post offers tips for programs to ensure that the participants they recruit, actually enroll. In this post, we examine some key lessons from MDRC’s evaluation of the WorkAdvance project to help turn program recruits into program success stories.
BriefJuly, 2019In the spring of 2019, MDRC invited practitioners from innovative career and technical education (CTE) programs to discuss questions of equity. This policy brief summarizes the most common equity challenges that were raised in the discussion, along with ideas that emerged for how to address them.
BriefLessons for Practitioners
October, 2016The demonstration of WorkAdvance confirmed that sectoral employment programs can increase employment and earnings among low-income individuals. This brief offers insights from providers on selecting sectors, tailoring training to employer needs, reducing attrition, securing placements that offer better wages and benefits, and helping workers plan for advancement.
ReportApril, 2016This broad national survey of community-based workforce development providers found that while few offer training programs for middle-skill employment in the retail industry, the opportunity exists to create more such programs if retail employers and nonprofit providers work together to overcome current obstacles and disincentives.
ReportImplementation and Early Impacts for Two Programs That Sought to Encourage Advancement Among Low-Income Workers
October, 2009While these two different programs in the Employment Retention and Advancement Project both increased service receipt, neither had effects on job retention or advancement after 1.5 years of follow-up.
ReportThe Employment Retention and Advancement Project
April, 2008A program to promote better initial job placements, employment retention, and advancement among unemployed applicants to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program faced implementation challenges and had no employment-related impacts after one year of follow-up.
ReportImproving Services for Low-Income Working Families
March, 2004A collaboration of MDRC and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, this report explores how best to improve job stability and career advancement of low-wage earners and increase their household income.
ReportLessons and Implications for Future Community Employment Initiatives
March, 2003Drawing upon the experiences of the lead community organizations during the initiative’s implementation phase, this third and final NJI report explores the feasibility and effectiveness of NJI’s novel approach to neighborhood revitalization.
ReportAn Early Report on the Vision and Challenges of Bringing an Employment Focus to a Community-Building Initiative
May, 2001 -
Other Publications
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Projects
Jean Grossman, Shira Kolnik Mattera, Barbara Condliffe, Dina A. R. Israel, Jedediah J. Teres, Hannah Dalporto, Sonia Drohojowska, Lauren Scarola, Frieda Molina, Rebecca Schwartz, Mei Huang, Rebecca Davis, Julia WalshThe pandemic has led to unfinished learning for a broad swath of students. This unfinished learning has also exacerbated existing disparities in student outcomes by race and ethnicity, income, and geography. Research has shown that high-dosage tutoring is the most effective way for improving learning for many students. But high-dosage tutoring is cost- and resource-...
Postsecondary education and training have long been viewed as paths to higher-paying jobs and careers, but many students face financial and other barriers to enrolling in and successfully completing college or high-quality training programs. Students of color have also been excluded by these programs because of inequities that are often rooted in historical and...
Dina A. R. Israel, Xavier Alemañy, Rebecca Behrmann, Emily Brennan, Virginia Knox, Michelle S. Manno, Emily Marano, Meghan McCormick, Charles Michalopoulos, Frieda Molina, Diego Quezada, Keri West, Samantha Wulfsohn, Donna Wharton-FieldsOver the last three decades, MDRC has established itself as a leader in providing technical assistance to organizations that deliver services to fathers through such projects as Parents’ Fair Share , Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood ( HMRF ) Training and Technical Assistance , Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs ( SIRF ) , and...
With support from the $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund, Social Finance aims to empower more than 20,000 learners to realize over $1 billion in aggregate wage gains over the next decade. Google Career Certificates are industry-recognized credentials that prepare people for in-demand, entry-level jobs in the fields of data analytics, IT support, project...
Dina A. R. Israel, Frieda Molina, Donna Wharton-Fields, Samantha Wulfsohn, Stephanie Rubino, Diego QuezadaSince 2005, the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood ( HMRF ) programs have received funding from the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance ( OFA ), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to support services, as well as research and evaluation activities. These programs contribute to OFA ’s larger goal of...
Alexander Mayer, Michelle Ware, Frieda Molina, Hannah Dalporto, Andrea Vasquez, Susan Scrivener, John Diamond, Dorota Biedzio Rizik, Rashida Welbeck, Sophia Sutcliffe, Clinton Key, Melissa Boynton, Austin Slaughter, Erick Alonzo, Kalito Luna, Xavier Alemañy, Melissa West, Sumner PereraIncome share agreements ( ISA s) are designed to help students pay for and attend postsecondary education and career training programs. With an ISA , students receive financial support to help cover the cost of their education and, in return, agree to pay a fixed percentage of their future income over a predetermined time period. ISA s are gaining popularity as an...
Quality early care and education can have lasting positive effects on young children, especially those growing up in low-income families. However, there are ongoing challenges in recruiting, supporting, and retaining a qualified, healthy, and stable early care and education ( ECE ) workforce that reflects the linguistic, racial, and ethnic diversity of the families...
JoAnn Hsueh, Michelle Maier, Frieda Molina, Samantha Wulfsohn, Marie-Andrée Somers, Electra Small, Sharon Huang, Amena Sengal, Alexandra Bernardi, Marissa Strassberger, Noemi Altman, Ilana Blum, Ebony Scott, Margaret Hennessy, Mervett Hefyan, Mallory Undestad, Sharon Rowser, Amy TaubThe Variations in Implementation of Quality Interventions ( VIQI ): Examining the Quality-Child Outcomes Relationship in Child Care and Early Education project is a large-scale, rigorous study with several important aims and implications for current child care and early education policy and practices, including:
Determining the effectiveness of interventions for...HomePath is a combined Housing First and shared-medical-appointments intervention. It aims to increase housing stability, improve treatment outcomes, and reduce returns to shelters, emergency rooms, and justice systems for people who have experienced homelessness and are struggling with opioid addiction.
Housing First is a person-centered approach to reducing...
Frieda Molina, Rachel Rosen, Sonia Drohojowska, William Corrin, Erika B. Lewy, Hannah Dalporto, Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow.field-name-body .label-above { display: none; }Motivated by a desire to address both education and wage disparities, policymakers, educators, employers, and philanthropists have increasingly begun to invest in new models of career and technical education (CTE) that are based on the premise that all students need postsecondary credentials to adapt to an increasingly...
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Job Corps program provides education and training to disadvantaged young people. It offers high school education services combined with career and technical training in a residential setting. The Cascades College and Career Academy ( CCCA ) pilot is an ambitious and evidence-based attempt to improve upon the Job Corps model for its...
Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Susan Scrivener, Charles Michalopoulos, Dina A. R. Israel, Johanna Walter, Lauren Cates, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Emily Marano, Viktoriya Syrov, Douglas Phillips, Kyla Wasserman, Lily Freedman, Osvaldo Avila, Emily Brennan, Jillian Verrillo, Gilda Azurdia, Frieda Molina, Shelley Rappaport, Clinton Key, Nandita Verma, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Shawna Anderson, Kelsey Schaberg, Caitlin Anzelone, James A. Riccio, Keri West, Caroline Schultz, Ethan FeldmanMany Americans struggle in the labor market even when overall economic conditions are good. Unemployment is persistently high for some demographic groups and in certain geographic areas, and a large proportion of working-age adults — about two in five in 2019 — tend to be out of the labor force. Factors such as systemic racism embedded in the economy and...
The H-1B visa program, established in 1990 by Congress, allows employers to hire foreigners to work in “specialty occupations” (such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, health care, business, financial services, or life sciences) on a temporary basis. In 1998, a user fee was added to fund scholarship and training programs that develop the skills of the...
Jean Grossman, Dan Bloom, Barbara S. Goldman, John Hutchins, Jared Smith, Frieda Molina, Virginia Knox, Clinton Key, Bret Barden, Jessica Kopsic, Rebecca Schwartz, Emily Marano, Sophia Sutcliffe, Helen LeeMany human services programs require that applicants complete a series of steps — from providing eligibility to arranging transportation and child care — in order to benefit from services. Program designers often assume that individuals carefully consider their options and make the best decisions for their personal circumstances. Over the past 30 years, however,...
Barbara S. Goldman, Frieda Molina, Donna Wharton-Fields, Richard Hendra, David Navarro, Susan Scrivener, Betsy L. Tessler, Jonathan Bigelow, Keith Olejniczak, Kelsey Schaberg, Annie Utterback, Alexandra Pennington, Brandon HawkinsThe Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ( SNAP ) — formerly the food stamp program —is a critical work support for low-income people and families. Although SNAP has included various employment and training requirements for adult recipients to maintain their eligibility since the 1970s, the SNAP Employment and Training ( SNAP E&T ) program was established as...
Frieda Molina, Barbara S. Goldman, Richard Hendra, Betsy L. Tessler, Keith Olejniczak, Kelsey Schaberg, Hannah Dalporto, Alexandra PenningtonPast evaluations have provided solid evidence regarding what works to help low-income individuals become employed. However, these studies have also found that many people who found jobs were not better off financially, in part because these jobs were unstable, low paying, and provided few advancement opportunities. More recent randomized controlled evaluations of both...
Shira Kolnik Mattera, Electra Small, Nina Castells, Barbara S. Goldman, JoAnn Hsueh, Ximena Portilla, Frieda Molina, Howard Bloom, Patrizia Mancini, Sharon RowserHead Start, which serves nearly 1 million low-income children, is the nation’s largest federally sponsored early childhood education program. Designed to narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers, Head Start provides comprehensive programming during the preschool period to improve children’s social competence and academic readiness for...
The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 ( WIA ) is the federal government’s largest source of federally funded employment services and training. WIA is the latest in a series of federal employment and training programs, the first having arisen in response to the Great Depression. WIA aims to bring together formerly fragmented public and private reemployment services, make...
James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Edith Yang, Donna Wharton-Fields, Nandita Verma, Caroline Schultz, Frieda Molina, Cynthia Miller, Richard Hendra, Barbara S. Goldman, Jared Smith, Mark van Dok, Natasha Piatnitskaia, Betsy L. Tessler, Stephanie Rubino, Sharon RowserThe Social Innovation Fund ( SIF ) , an initiative enacted under the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, deploys millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions in three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support. This work seeks to create a catalog of proven approaches that can be replicated...
Richard Hendra, Cynthia Miller, Susan Scrivener, Frieda Molina, David Navarro, Barbara S. Goldman, Dan Bloom, John Martinez, Mark van Dok, Erika Lundquist, Edith Yang, Alexandra PenningtonThe federal welfare overhaul of 1996 ushered in myriad policy changes aimed at getting low-income parents off public assistance and into employment. These changes — especially cash welfare’s transformation from an entitlement into a time-limited benefit contingent on work participation — have intensified the need to help low-income families become economically self-...
Frieda Molina, Cynthia Miller, David Navarro, James A. Riccio, Caroline Schultz, Betsy L. Tessler, Mark van Dok, Anne Warren, Alexandra PenningtonThe wages and earnings of low-income workers have been stagnant or declining in real terms for approximately 35 years. Nationwide, the labor market-driven growth of the low-wage workforce has become a major issue for both the business community and the public. Low-wage workers represent a significant segment of the nation’s workforce: According to the Bureau of Labor...
Over the past two decades, poverty has become increasingly concentrated in the nation’s inner cities, while many employment opportunities — especially entry-level jobs for people with limited education and skills — have relocated to the urban periphery. Roughly eight million residents in the urban communities where poverty is most entrenched do not have access to jobs...
Low-income children too often begin school without the basic behavioral, emotional, and cognitive skills that they need to thrive academically — putting them at an immediate disadvantage and contributing to the large gap that develops in school achievement between low-income children and their more affluent peers. States and localities are responding by making major...