Michael is a nationally recognized expert on equity-focused, early childhood research, with a special focus on low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse populations. He provides strategic oversight, direction, and technical expertise for a growing portfolio of work in that arena at NORC. He has over 30 years of experience conducting applied policy research at the national, state, and local levels.

Currently, Michael is the principal investigator on a national study to better understand, support, and improve Early Head Start/Head Start policies and practices for delivering disability services for children at risk for or with disabilities and their families. He is also the principal investigator on a project that examines the feasibility of implementing telehealth services within rural early childhood programs. He serves as the co-principal investigator on a project which supports secondary data analyses of the 2017 National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Study dataset. In addition, he is the principal investigator on a project, which will document and improve access to and ensure the successful vaccination of the farmworker population. 

Within NORC, Michael also has key leadership roles on several corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion committees, including the Diversity, Racial Equity, and Inclusion (DREI) Strategy Group, DREI Steering Committee, NORC DREI Scholars program, and the Equity and Inclusion Collaborative, which is comprised of representatives from nine major research organizations.

Before joining NORC, Michael co-led the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families at Abt Associates, which conducts research to inform federal programs and policies supporting low-income Hispanic children and families. He also oversaw the design and implementation of a nationally representative study describing the characteristics of children and families enrolled in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program and other equity-focused childhood research. He directed the Child Outcomes Research and Evaluation team at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which oversaw the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, the National Head Start Impact Study, and other federal studies.

Over the past 25 years, Michael has worked to expand equity-focused mentoring opportunities for diverse early career scholars and to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the next generation of researchers.  He co-led the development and oversight of the NORC DREI Scholars program and a range of mentoring and research capacity-building activities when he co-led the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families. He also provided oversight for two mentoring and professional development programs within ACF: the Head Start Graduate Student Research Scholars and the Society for Research in Child Development Federal Policy Research Fellowship programs. 

Michael has written numerous peer-reviewed research articles, reports, and briefs on issues related to early childhood, Head Start, early care and education utilization, and cultural and linguistic diversity issues, including the psychometrics of language, literacy, and classroom observational measures for young dual language learners.