Jimmy Aguilar joined the Sloan Foundation in August 2026 as a Program Associate supporting Lorelle Espinosa in the Higher Education program.

Before joining the Foundation, Aguilar was a researcher at the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, where he studied how staff inside universities turn legal mandates and political directives into the routines and software they use every day. His research interests include graduate admissions under state affirmative action bans, the language admissions offices adopted after the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision, the place of technology in admissions decisions, and the rubrics faculty use to weigh applicants.

Aguilar previously worked in diversity and multicultural recruitment at Georgetown University, as an advisor in MBA admissions and financial aid at Harvard Business School, and as a college success and grants management intern at the ECMC Foundation. A first-generation college graduate and a Gates Millennium Scholar, Aguilar earned his Ph.D. in education policy from the USC Rossier School of Education; his M.S. in integrated design, business and technology from USC's Iovine and Young Academy; his Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and his B.A. from UCLA.