Marcella Bombardieri is a Polk Award-winning journalist and higher education policy researcher. She is writing a book for Scribner that chronicles the lives of community college students and leaders in one Texas city, illustrating why community colleges are an essential tool to fight poverty and shore up democracy.<\/p>
Bombardieri was previously a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she explored how to address racial and economic inequity, serve nontraditional students, and support critical, overlooked sectors such as community colleges, minority-serving institutions, and Tribal colleges and universities.<\/p>
Before working in policy, Bombardieri was education editor at Politico<\/i> and a longtime reporter for The<\/i> Boston Globe<\/i>, where she concentrated on higher education and investigative reporting. As a member of the Globe\u2019<\/i>s Spotlight Team, she worked on projects ranging from corruption in state government to monopoly power in healthcare. For a series on judges\u2019 leniency toward drunk drivers, she shared a George Polk Award for legal reporting. She also covered politics and crime, and reported from Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>Selected Work<\/h2>