Abby Kiesa is the director of impact at CIRCLE, a national research center on youth civic and political engagement. In addition to work on research and evaluation projects, Abby serves as liaison to practitioner organizations across the country, helping them to maintain a dialogue between research and practice. She is versed in a wide range of youth civic and political engagement efforts and practices, and is particularly interested in the relationship between equality/inequality and impact vis-à-vis democratic participation, and the ways in which infrastructures like higher education support civic life and democracy. Abby has an MA from the University of Maryland, with a focus on American Studies.