Mina has a BA in Economics and a Masters degree in Public Affairs, both from the University of Texas at Austin. After earning her MPA degree, Mina worked for Mathematica Policy Research as a Research Analyst for two years, where she evaluated programs in education, early childhood, and workforce development. She has also been working as a consultant for the Pell Institute developing sections of a web-based evaluation toolkit that is designed to help pre-college outreach programs evaluate and improving their own performance.

Mina’s general research interests include program evaluation and quantitative methods. Once a community college student and employee herself, she is interested in studying how colleges can improve the graduation rates of their minority and low-income students.