Jennifer Kotler Clarke

Jennifer Kotler Clarke is the Vice President of Domestic Research at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street and other educational programs for children. Dr. Kotler Clarke is responsible for research planning and creating logic models in order to maximize the impact of Sesame Workshop’s content in the United States. She oversees research design, methodology, assessment and data analysis. She also develops and executes studies designed to address major developmental questions that could inform the creation of educational material for children.

Prior to joining the Workshop, Dr. Kotler Clarke worked on an evaluation of a school-based violence prevention program at the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She has worked with numerous prestigious organizations such as the Center for Media Education, the Center for Research on Influences of Television on Children at the University of Texas in Austin and Georgetown University, where she coordinated the Children & Media Project while completing a postdoctoral fellowship.

Dr. Kotler Clarke also served as an adjunct professor at the Teachers College at Columbia University and Georgetown University. Her contributions to this field of research have been published in books and journals including Televizion, the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, and Television and the American Family.

Dr. Kotler Clarke graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Human Development and Family Studies. She went on to receive her master’s in Human Development from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Child Development and Family Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently resides in Westchester, New York with her husband and both play on United States Tennis Association teams.