Dr Knatokie Ford

Dr. Knatokie Ford is currently a Media Innovation Fellow at the Simons Foundation. She previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) through the end of the Obama Administration in January 2017. In her role at the White House, Dr. Ford oversaw development of national initiatives to raise visibility and improve the image of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and careers. She previously served as a AAAS Science &Technology Policy Fellow at OSTP from 2012-2014 with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) where she managed concurrent projects on education technology and improving the Nation’s health care system, in addition to working with OSTP’s STEM inclusion team. In 2014, Dr. Ford established Fly Sci Enterprise, LLC, a STEM education/media consulting organization focused on increasing student interest in STEM and public understanding of science. Prior to working at OSTP, Dr. Ford was a postdoctoral research fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA. She also spent time in Los Angeles where she had the opportunity to work as a background actress in television and film and serve as a middle school teacher in an underserved community in South Central Los Angeles. Dr. Ford completed her PhD in Experimental Pathology at Harvard University where she studied age-related macular degeneration and received a BS/MS in Chemistry/Biological Chemistry from Clark Atlanta University.