Marisol Cuellar Mejia is a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center. Her research focuses on community college students and their path towards a four-year degree. Her recent projects have focused on examining statewide reforms to developmental education, recent trends and barriers to transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges, and the economic returns to a college degree. She is also a member of the PPIC Economic Policy Center, where she studies labor market trends. Her other areas of expertise include housing in California, and demographic trends. Before joining PPIC, she worked at Colombia’s National Association of Financial Institutions as an economic analyst, concentrating on issues related to the manufacturing sector and small business. She has also conducted agricultural and commodity market research for the Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers and the National Federation of Palm Oil Growers of Colombia. She holds a master’s degree in economics from Universidad del Rosario and a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis.