Delece Smith-Barrow is the Education editor at POLITICO. Prior to joining POLITICO, she was a senior editor for higher education at The Hechinger Report. She spent the 2016-2017 school year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she studied how top-tier universities were increasing the numbers of underrepresented minority faculty. Prior to joining The Hechinger Report, she was a reporter at U.S. News & World Report and a producer, writer and editor at The Washington Post. She received a bachelor's degree from University of Maryland--College Park and a master's degree from Georgetown University.