Hirokazu Yoshikawa is a Scientific Advisor for IPA's Education Program. He is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director (with J. Lawrence Aber) of the Global TIES for Children Center at NYU. He is a core faculty member of the Psychology of Social Intervention and Human Development Research and Policy programs at Steinhardt. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Institute of Human Development and Social Change and the Metropolitan Center for Equity and the Transformation of Schools at NYU. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. He also conducts research on culture, sexuality, and youth and young adult development in the context of GSAs (gender and sexuality alliances) with Paul Poteat, Jerel Calzo, and others.

His current projects also include leading the research and evaluation for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change and Lego Foundation-funded partnerships of Sesame Workshop with the International Rescue Committee and BRAC to provide early childhood programming for Syrian refugee families in the Middle East and Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh (with Alice Wuermli); the first experimental evaluation of an unconditional cash transfer for families with young children in the United States (with Greg Duncan, Kimberly Noble, Lisa Gennetian, Katherine Magnuson, Nathan Fox and Sarah Halpern-Meekin); and the Listening Project, a project to empower youth and adults to engage in in-depth questioning and listening at scale to address the societal crisis of connection (with Niobe Way, Jinjoo Han and Joseph Nelson). His recent books include Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality (with Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, and Christina Weiland, 2021, 2nd edition, Russell Sage) and Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children (2011, Russell Sage). He serves on the Board of Trustees of the William T. Grant Foundation, the National Board for Educational Sciences of the US Department of Education, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel of FCDO, the World Bank, UNICEF, and USAID, and the Levante advisory board of the Jacobs Foundation. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received two awards for mentorship of ethnic minority students from the American Psychological Association and an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University. He obtained his PhD in clinical psychology from NYU.