Marcella Mercer is originally from Nebraska, but has most recently called Denver her home. Before coming to Duke, she served as project manager for the Colorado Governor’s Office of Economic Recovery, where she supported the state’s work in managing billions of dollars of federal stimulus funds. Prior to this role, she taught 6th and 7th Grade Reading and Social Studies in Denver Public Schools. Her investment in her students led her classes to achieve up to two times the national average growth in reading skills. She was also awarded a Fulbright fellowship to teach students and develop educational programming in Malaysia in 2019. Marcella graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As a journalist, she wrote for state and national newspapers. Her work was featured in The Atlantic’s “More than 100 Exceptional Works of Journalism” and has earned several national honors, including “Story of the Year” at the Hearst Journalism Awards. In addition, she was a team member on a project that won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Grand Prize.