MacDowell works in MDRC’s Families and Children policy area, focusing on statistical programming, visualizing and analyzing data, and synthesizing findings of early childhood education and maternal and infant home visiting programs. His current projects include the Making Pre-K Count, which examines the effects of a preschool math curriculum, Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation, a federally funded evaluation of home visiting programs, and Family Level Assessment and State of Home Visiting, which studies the processes home visiting programs use to recruit and enroll families. MacDowell received his bachelor’s degree economics from Davidson College, where he conducted research on the effects of racial segregation on social mobility, police force demographics and their relationship to bias and crime, and housing affordability.