Alisha Small is a Researcher who served as the study director of Career and Technical Education (CTE) Statistics at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In this role, Alisha promoted greater access to datasets from the NCES studies, focusing on producing CTE statistics of course-taking and offerings for U.S. learners in secondary, postsecondary, and adult education to increase U.S. employability in high-demand occupations. As the CTE study director, Alisha also served as a co-sponsor of the National Training Education and Workforce Survey Pilot: 2022 with the National Science Foundation, which focuses on the skilled technical workforce with STEM-related certifications, vocational certificates, and licenses obtained at the sub-baccalaureate level offered by community colleges and vocational schools. Her work focused on increasing equitable access to secondary and postsecondary programs, leading to both high-quality jobs and additional high-quality postsecondary educational opportunities.

Alisha is also the former McNair Center scholar for economic growth at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, where she served as the principal researcher of the community-engaged research: “Impact of Urban Revitalization on Small Business Study”. She served over 15 years as an Economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, measuring U.S. job credentialing requirements and employment cost trends and performing data collection and analysis for the National Compensation Survey and the Occupational Requirements Survey. Alisha has interfaced with hundreds of employers across the United States. She has hands-on experience in Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) coding, National American Industry Codes (NAICS), U.S. occupational outlook, and corresponding occupational earnings.

As a former Education Statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics and her work as an Economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, she holds subject matter expertise in postsecondary credential analysis across states and knowledge of various education and economic datasets.