Michal is also cross-appointed at U of T’s School of Public Policy and Governance. Michal has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Waterloo with a focus on children’s social and emotional development. Prior to coming to U of T she worked as a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. Her applied research focuses on what makes for good quality early childhood education programs and how to measure the quality of these programs for quality assurance purposes. Michal’s research has been supported by a host of government and private foundations and her papers have been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals.