Jake Wertz

I'm a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, interested in understanding how changes in America's schools shape social inequality.

My research is motivated and informed by eight years of experience as an entrepreneurial leader in urban education. In 2015, I founded Valiente College Prep, a charter public middle school in southeast Los Angeles, which now serves over 200 students. Before then, I created and directed the Urban Prep Fellows Program, an innovative mentoring-focused fellowship for recent college graduates serving in the nation's first network of all-boys charter public high schools, located on the South and West Sides of Chicago. I graduated with a BS in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2009.

Department of Sociology

Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences

University of Wisconsin - Madison