Lourdes Fernandez

Lourdes Fernandez is a bilingual survey researcher with extensive experience in leading teams. She has expertise in qualitative research methods, including interviews and focus groups, survey design, cognitive interviews, and document and narrative analysis. Fernandez uses participatory and community-engaged methods to improve the accessibility of data collection.

Fernandez leads qualitative research for a project focused on young people’s well-being. The team conducts interviews and focus groups and uses case study methodology to understand how programs support young people’s emerging identities and foster a sense of belonging. She also leads qualitative analysis for a study that uses systematic qualitative coding on a collection of more than 1,700 documents to understand the portfolio of grants.

Fernandez served as study lead in several Sexual Risk Avoidance Education studies. She led a study investigating curricular alignment to Title V legislative requirements, which includes reviewing commonly used curricula, interviewing program directors, and facilitating an interactive workshop. She served as the qualitative research task lead and writer in a study investigating how to improve LGBTQ+ inclusion in healthy marriage and relationship education programs as part of the Fatherhood, Relationships, and Marriage – Illuminating the Next Generation project.

Before joining Mathematica in 2022, Fernandez worked as faculty and as the assistant director for the composition program at George Mason University, where she supported faculty development and taught composition, technical writing, and rhetoric courses. Fernandez is also a military spouse, spending more than a decade working in education centers and in family advocacy on military bases in the United States and Europe. She holds a Ph.D. in writing and rhetoric from George Mason University.