Lorelle L. Espinosa serves as program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where she is responsible for developing and implementing evidence-based strategies for the Foundation’s grantmaking to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in STEM higher education. Her portfolio includes the Foundation’s signature DEI initiatives—including the University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring, Sloan Centers for Systemic Change, and Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership—which seek to transform graduate science and engineering education in ways that make it more welcoming, inclusive and equitable for all. In 2021, Espinosa launched the Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education, which supports partnerships between Minority Serving Institutions and STEM graduate programs across the country.

With 25 years of experience in higher education research, policy, and practice, Espinosa is an important voice and frequent contributor to the national conversation on issues pertaining to college access and success for underrepresented students of color and on the need for equity-minded leadership in postsecondary settings. She has spent much of her career focused on DEI in STEM higher education with an early emphasis on women of color in these fields. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2020, Espinosa was Vice President for Research at the American Council on Education (ACE), where she was responsible for building, strengthening, and expanding ACE’s research capabilities and setting a research agenda that has shaped the national conversation on issues ranging from race-conscious policies in higher education to free speech on campus. Espinosa served as committee co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study that produced the influential report, Minority Serving Institutions: America's Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce. In 2019, she was invited by Congress to share key findings from this report in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Espinosa began her career in student affairs and undergraduate education at the University of California, Davis, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Educational Review, Research in Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and Science Magazine and has also been cited in amici briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. A Pell Grant recipient and first-generation college graduate, Espinosa earned her Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change from the University of California, Los Angeles; her B.A. from the University of California, Davis; and her A.A. from Santa Barbara City College.