Dean, College of Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

James D. Anderson is Dean of the College of Education, the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education and affiliate Professor of History, African American Studies and the College of Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His scholarship focuses broadly on the history of U.S. education, with a subfield in the history of African American education. His book, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, won the American Educational Research Association outstanding book award in 1990. He was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2008. In 2013, he was selected Center for Advanced Study Professor of Education at Illinois, and in 2016, he was awarded AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Award for best article. In 2020, the American Educational Research Association awarded him the Presidential Citation, he was sworn into the Board of Trustees at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and he was inducted into the Stillman College Educator Hall of Fame.  In 2021, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Senior Vice President
Spencer Foundation

Megan Bang studies the dynamics of culture, learning, and development with a focus on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems to create more effective and just learning environments, with a specific focus on STEM education. Bang has examined educator learning across career stages and the transformative forms of pedagogical practice. Dr. Bang serves on the Board of Science Education at the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Science Foundation’s Education and Human Resources Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education. She is also a professor in the Learning Sciences and Human Development in the School of Education and Social Policy and Psychology at Northwestern University.

Chancellor
Kern Community College District

In 2021, Dr. Sonya Christian became the sixth chancellor of the Kern Community College District. Dr. Christian strives to cultivate district-wide ownership of advancing the district's mission.

Dr. Christian was a math faculty prior to moving into the administrative ranks of dean, vice president, president, and now chancellor.

An advocate for continued education across social and economic boundaries, Dr. Sonya Christian has worked tirelessly to uphold and further that mission during her tenure as Chancellor of the Kern Community College District.

Christian began her three-decade career in education at BC in 1991, first as a math faculty member and later as division chair, then Dean of Science, Engineering, Allied Health and Mathematics. In 2003, Christian joined Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon as associate vice president for instruction, then vice president of academic and student affairs and chief academic officer. Christian returned home in 2013 after being selected as the 10th President in Bakersfield College’s prestigious history. Dr. Christian was selected as Kern Community College District Chancellor in 2021. 

Christian earned her bachelor of science degree from University of Kerala in Kerala, India; a master of science in applied mathematics from University of Southern California; and her doctorate from University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Emeritus
School of Educational Studies
Claremont Graduate University

Carl A. Cohn is professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University. From 2011 through 2018, he served the state of California first as a state board of education member, and then as executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. Previously, he was superintendent of schools in both the Long Beach and San Diego school systems, as well as the Federal Court monitor for the Los Angeles school system. His tenure in Long Beach culminated with his winning the McGraw Prize in 2002, and the district winning the Broad Prize in 2003.

Dr. Cohn currently serves on the following boards: the Spencer Foundation, CTA’s Institute for Teaching, the Center for Assessment, the Alder Graduate School of Education, the Education Standing Committee of the California Catholic Conference, the Los Angeles Catholic Education Council, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities. In addition, he recently joined the Leadership Council of California Competes. During the summer and fall of 2020, he hosted the popular EdSource podcast “Schools on the Frontlines,” which captured the voices of superintendents and other educational leaders as they faced the multiple challenges of leading during a pandemic.

In addition to his work in K-12 education, he has prepared future educational leaders at Pittsburgh, California State University, Los Angeles, USC, Harvard, GW and Claremont.

President / CEO
Compton College and Compton Community College District

Dr. Keith Curry is President of Compton College and CEO of the Compton Community College District (CCCD). He is responsible for overseeing all departments and functions of Compton College and the district and serves as secretary for the CCCD Board of Trustees.

Curry is an active member of the CCCD Foundation; Association of California Community College Administrators (ACCCA); Statewide Association of Community Colleges; The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice Advisory Board; and the President’s Roundtable. He has participated in several Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges visiting teams. 
 
in 2018, Curry received the Harry Buttimer Distinguished Administrator Award for demonstrating integrity, principle, compassion, and strength in leadership and making significant contributions to the college district and community. At the 2019 Community College League of California Annual Conference, Curry was honored as one of three 2019 Champions of Equity by the Campaign for College Opportunity and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. The award honors those who prioritize student-centered policies that produce equitable outcomes and expand opportunities for Californians. In June 2020, Curry was invited by Governor Newsom’s Senior Policy Advisor for Higher Education, Lande Ajose, to serve on the California Higher Education Recovery with Equity Task Force.
 
Curry earned a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of California, Irvine, and a bachelor’s degree in American studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

President / CEO
Learning Policy Institute

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University and founding president of the Learning Policy Institute, created to provide high-quality research for policies that enable equitable and empowering education for each and every child. At Stanford she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign. Most recently she was appointed President of the California State Board of Education by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of its awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy. She is also a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education. From 1994–2001, she was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future was named one of the most influential reports affecting U.S. education in that decade. In 2006, she was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy. She led the Obama education policy transition team in 2008 and the Biden education transition team in 2020. She was appointed President of the California State Board of Education in 2019.

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded both a preschool and a public high school. She served as Director of the RAND Corporation’s education program and as an endowed professor at Columbia University, Teachers College before coming to Stanford. She has consulted widely with federal, state and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices and is the recipient of 14 honorary degrees in the U.S. and internationally. Among her more than 600 publications are a number of award-winning books, including The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World and The Flat World and Education. She received an Ed.D. from Temple University (with highest distinction) and a B.A. from Yale University (magna cum laude).

Professor / Associate Dean
Department of Education Studies/Division of Social Sciences
University of California, San Diego

Amanda Datnow is the Chancellor’s Associates Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Education Studies and Associate Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. 

Her research focuses on educational reform and policy, with a particular interest in issues of equity and the professional lives of educators. Her recent work has involved studies of data use, teacher collaboration, and school and system transformation. Her current projects involve interdisciplinary teams engaged in research-practice partnerships. She is deeply committed to impacting policy and practice and works with a variety of local, national, and international organizations to realize this goal. Datnow’s work has been published in leading journals, and she is the author of eight books, including most recently Professional Collaboration with Purpose: Teaching Learning Towards Equitable and Excellent Schools (with V. Park). Datnow has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including being selected as an AERA Fellow.

Senior Fellow
Consortium on School Research
The University of Chicago

Dr. John Q. Easton is Senior Fellow at the UChicago Consortium on School Research. Prior to his return to the Consortium, Dr. Easton served as vice president of programs at the Spencer Foundation. At Spencer, he developed and led a new grant program for research practitioner partnerships. He has also served as director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. Previously, Dr. Easton was executive director of the UChicago Consortium. He is currently a member of the Illinois Employment Security Advisory Board, the Educational Testing Service Research Advisory Board, CPS’s SQRP Planning Team, and is chair of the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative’s External Advisory Board.

Professor, Science Education, Department of Teaching and Learning
Vanderbilt University

Professor Enyedy studies how people learn through social interaction.  He often engages in Design-Based-Research and creates new teaching and learning contexts where teachers and students have opportunities to learn. From the records of their learning (often video taped interactions) Enyedy strives to understand how learning is organized.  For the last 10 years, Enyedy has been pioneering the use of mixed reality environments—where physical motion of children moving around a room is used as the input for a computer simulation.  The intent of the mixed reality participatory simulations is to spark conversations between students and support instructional conversations in productive ways.

President
William T. Grant Foundation

Adam Gamoran is president of the William T. Grant Foundation, a charitable organization that supports research on programs, policies, and practices to reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and on ways to improve the use of research evidence in youth-related policies and practices. Previously, he held the John D. MacArthur Chair in Sociology and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he spent three decades engaged in research on educational inequality and school. His research contributions have been honored by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the American Educational Research Association, and the Sociology of Education Section of the American Sociological Association. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education, which he recently served as vice president. He was also twice appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences. For the U.S. Department of Education, he chaired the Independent Advisory Panel of the National Assessment of Career and Technical Education. He has also provided service to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in a variety of capacities, and currently chairs the consensus panel on The Future of Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education.

Associate Professor
Graduate School of Education
Stanford University

Antero Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, where he is also the faculty director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program. 

Prior to completing his Ph.D., Antero was an English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. His research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research. Based on his research, Antero co-designed the Critical Design and Gaming School—a public high school in Los Angeles. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books about the possibilities of literacies, play, and civics in transforming schooling in America.

Associate Professor
School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

David G. García earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History at UCLA and is Associate Professor in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. 

He is the author of the award-winning book, Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (University of California Press, 2018), which critically examines a history of racially separate and unequal schooling for Mexican American and African American students in Oxnard, California. His research and teaching analyze Chicana/o teatro (theater) as public revisionist history, the pedagogy of Hollywood’s urban school genre, and Chicana/o educational histories.

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

Jarvis R. Givens is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty affiliate in the department of African & African American Studies at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of education, African American history, and theories of race and power in education. His first book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, which won the 2022 ASALH Book Prize, was published in 2021 by Harvard University Press. Professor Givens is currently building The Black Teacher Archive, an online portal which will house digitized records documenting the more than one-hundred-year history of "Colored Teachers Associations." His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the William F. Milton Fund. Professor Givens earned his PhD in African American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a native of Compton, California and currently resides in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Dean, Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania

Pam Grossman is the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. A distinguished scholar, Pam Grossman came to Penn from Stanford University’s School of Education, where she was the Nomellini-Olivier Professor of Education. At Stanford she founded and led the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching and established the Hollyhock Fellowship for early career teachers in underserved schools. Before joining Stanford, she was the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington. Dr. Grossman’s research focuses on the preparation of teachers and other professionals and issues of instructional quality, particularly in English Language Arts. Her most recent work focuses on practice-based teacher education and the role of core practices of teaching in teacher preparation and professional development. She co-directs the Core Practice Consortium, a consortium of faculty from 11 different institutions that has been investigating pedagogies useful for helping novices learn to teach. She was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2009 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Associate Dean
Graduate School of Education
University of California, Berkeley

Kris D. Gutiérrez is the Carol Liu Professor and Associate Dean at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Gutiérrez brings a critical approach to her work in the learning sciences, literacy, educational policy, and qualitative, and design-based approaches to inquiry. Gutiérrez is a member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, AERA, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She is past president of the American Educational Research Association and was appointed by President Obama to the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences, for which she served as vice-chair. Gutiérrez’s research examines learning in designed environments, with attention to students from nondominant communities and translingual populations. Her general focus is on the cultural dimensions of learning. Her work on Third Spaces examines the affordances of syncretic approaches to learning, digital and STEM learning, and the re-mediation of functional systems of learning. Her work in social design experiments offers a utopian methodology that foregrounds the political and ethnical dimensions of design research and are concerned with possible futures. Gutiérrez awards include the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction, the 2016 Oscar Causey award for influencing the field of literacy, the 2016 Medal of Excellence from the Columbia University/Teachers College, the 2014 Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research – Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2014 Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education. Gutiérrez received one of the early (1997) mentorship awards from the Spencer Foundation. 

Pritzker Family Endowed Professor
School of Education & Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Tyrone C. Howard is the Pritzker Family Endowed professor in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Dr. Howard is the director of the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families. He is also the director of the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. 

Professor Howard has published over 100 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports. Professor Howard’s research examines race, culture, and educational equity for marginalized populations. Dr. Howard is considered one of the premier experts on educational equity and access in the country. A former classroom teacher in Compton, California. Dr. Howard is a member of the National Academy of Education, and was named an AERA Fellow in 2017.

Director, K-12 Education
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Bob Hughes is director of K-12 Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before joining the foundation, Bob was president of New Visions for Public Schools, a New York City school network of 70 district schools serving approximately 45,000 students. During his tenure, New Visions created 99 district and seven charter public schools, provided mentoring services to hundreds of new principals, developed school-based certification programs for teachers and principals, secondary curricula now accessed by thousands of teachers, and data management tools to streamline school operations and track student progress toward graduation and college. Bob has also led or been involved in individual and class action litigation in special education and state school finance. He started his career providing legal representation to homeless parents and students in the New York City public school system and worked extensively with community organizers around education issues.

Bob serves as a board member of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Prior board affiliations include Advocates for Children of New York, Fund For Teachers, and Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher of Education Week.

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy
Goldman School of Public Policy
University of California, Berkeley

Rucker C. Johnson is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in applied econometrics and topical courses in race, poverty, and inequality. Johnson is also a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. As a labor economist who specializes in the economics of education, he focuses his work on the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. Johnson was inducted as the Sir Arthur Lewis Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and received the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. His research has appeared in leading academic journals and been featured in mainstream media outlets, and he has been invited to give policy briefings at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Johnson is the author of the book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works. He is committed to advancing his scholarly agenda of fusing insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives to improve our understanding of the causes, consequences, and remedies of inequality in this country. Johnson earned his PhD in economics at the University of Michigan. 

Professor
Learning Sciences & Human Development
University of Colorado at Boulder

Dr. A. Susan Jurow is a Professor of Learning Sciences & Human Development at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she is also the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement. Dr. Jurow is currently Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Learning Sciences. Her research has focused on studying learning in progressive social movements and the design of learning for radical possibilities.

Edwina S. Tarry Professor Emerita
School of Education and Social Policy and African-American Studies
Northwestern University

Dr. Carol Lee is the Edwina S. Tarry Professor Emerita in the School of Education and Social Policy and African-American Studies at Northwestern University. She is President of the National Academy of Education, a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), AERA’s past representative to the World Educational Research Association, past vice-president of Division G of AERA, past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and past co-chair of the Research Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English. 

She is a member of the National Academy of Education, a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and the International Society of the Learning Sciences, a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Reading Hall of Fame. She has received numerous awards including Distinguished Contributions to Education from AERA, the McGraw Prize in Education, the Squire Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, Scholars of Color Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois-Urbana, The President’s Pacesetters Award from the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. 
 
She is an author/editor of numerous journal articles, handbook chapters and 10 books and special journal issues. Her research addresses cultural supports for learning that include a broad ecological focus, with attention to language and literacy and African-American youth. 
 
Her career spans 55 years, including work as an ELA teacher at the high school and community college levels, a primary grade teacher, and a university professor. She is a founder of four African centered schools that span a 49 year history, including two charter schools under the umbrella of the Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools where she serves as chair of the Board of Directors.

Chair of Native American Studies
University of New Mexico

Tiffany S. Lee is Dibé Łizhiní (Blacksheep) Diné from Crystal, New Mexico and Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Dr. Lee is a Professor and the Chair of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.  Her research examines educational and culturally-based outcomes of Indigenous language immersion schools, Native youth perspectives on language reclamation, and socio-culturally centered education.  Her work has been published in journals, such as the American Journal of Education, Harvard Educational Review, the Journals of Language, Identity, and Education and American Indian Education; and in books, such as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought, and Indigenous language revitalization in the Americas.  She is the former President of the Navajo Studies Conference, Inc and a former high school social studies and language arts teacher at schools on the Navajo Nation and at Santa Fe Indian School.  She is currently working with colleagues and community members to open a Diné language nest in Albuquerque.  She is also working with colleagues on a teacher education program that will prepare Diné speakers into becoming Diné language immersion educators.

Assistant Professor
Department of Education
University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Marin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Tongva territory). 

As a learning scientist, she uses video-ethnographic methods and participatory design research to explore questions about the cultural nature of cognition and development. A primary goal of her work is to broaden conceptualizations of learning and teaching in ways that are consequential to the communities she partners with. To do this, she draws upon Indigenous ways of knowing and sociocultural theories to: (1) develop research on learning across a variety of activities including the everyday and the professional and (2) co-design learning contexts with communities that are in right relations with Indigenous lands/waters. Within these research strands she examines the multiple ways that multigenerational groups of people coordinate attention and observation in order to participate in joint activity, collaborate, and improvise. She also engages in micro-ethnographic analyses of the moment-to-moment unfolding of interaction, accounting for the role of relationality, embodied movement, and place in science-related education and teaching/learning more generally. She has widespread experience designing and learning with communities to cultivate educational contexts that create conditions for more equitable futures.

Chief Operating Officer
National Science Foundation

Dr. Karen Marrongelle is the Chief Operating Officer of the National Science Foundation, where she oversees operations of the $8.5B federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering.  Previously, she served as Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation for Education and Human Resources (EHR). She led the EHR Directorate in supporting research that enhances learning and teaching to achieve excellence in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

Prior to joining NSF, Marrongelle was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University and Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, where she oversaw 24 departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

In addition to her work as Dean, Marrongelle has served as a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Portland State University since 2001. Prior to her appointment as dean, she held positions as the Vice Chancellor for Academic Strategies and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Standards and Collaboration with the Oregon University System.

From 2007-2009, Marrongelle served on a rotation as a program officer at NSF and led numerous grants, collaborating with researchers nationally and internationally to improve undergraduate mathematics education and K-12 mathematics professional development. 

Marrongelle has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy from Albright College, a master's degree in mathematics from Lehigh University and a doctorate in mathematics education from the University of New Hampshire.

Program Director, Education
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Kent McGuire is the Program Director of Education at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He leads the investments of our teaching and learning and open educational resources strategies, with a focus on helping all students succeed in college, work and civic life. 

Previously, Kent was the President and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation, an organization committed to advancing public education in the American South, with a focus on equity and excellence. Prior to that, he served as the Dean of the College of Education at Temple University and was a tenured professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.

From 2001 to 2003, Kent was a senior vice president at the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, where he split his time between research projects on school reform and directing its department on education, children and youth. He has also been an education program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts and directed the education program at the Lilly Endowment. Kent served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education from 1998 to 2001.

Kent earned his Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Colorado, an M.A. from Columbia University Teacher’s College, and a B.A in economics from the University of Michigan. He serves on the boards of the Wallace Foundation, Teacher’s College Columbia University, the Success for All Foundation, and the National Public Education Support Fund.

Assistant Professor
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Maxine McKinney de Royston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Her research analyzes the pedagogical and interactional characteristics of learning environments, such as math classrooms, as they relate to larger discourses about race, identity, power, and learning. Dr. McKinney de Royston’s work centers around two interrelated research strands: conceptualizing the multidimensional and politicized nature of learning and its implications for teaching; and examining how learning environments operate as racialized learning spaces. Among other places, Dr. McKinney de Royston’s work has been published in Teachers College Record, The Journal of the Learning Sciences, Cognition and Instruction, and Urban Education. She is a co-editor, along with Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Carol Lee, and Roy Pea, of the Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning.

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Nicole Mirra is an assistant professor of urban teacher education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 

She previously taught high school English Language Arts in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California. Her research explores the intersections of critical literacy and civic engagement with youth and teachers across classroom, community, and digital learning environments. Central to her research and teaching agenda is a commitment to honoring and amplifying the literacy practices and linguistic resources that students from minoritized communities bring to public life and articulating a speculative paradigm for civic education. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including American Educational Research Journal, Harvard Educational Review, Review of Research in Education, and International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. She is the author of Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement (Teachers College Press, 2018) and a co-author (with Antero Garcia and Ernest Morrell) of Doing Youth Participatory Action Research: Transforming Inquiry with Researchers, Educators, and Students (Routledge, 2015).

Superintendent
Cajon Valley Union School District

Dr. David Miyashiro is a forward-thinking, award-winning education leader with a 20-year career spent revolutionizing learning approaches, education models, and school district capabilities in Southern California. 

As a digital pioneer, he has navigated districts into the hi-tech era, delivering numerous innovation “firsts,” for which he has garnered professional honors. Those include Superintendent of the Year and recognition from the White House and U.S. Department of Education as one of the “Top 35 District Leaders in Personalized Learning.” Districts under his leadership have also won awards, such as the California School Boards Association’s Golden Bell Award, the National School Boards Association’s Magna Award for Digital Learning, and the California Distinguished Schools Award.
 
 Dr. Miyashiro has a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy from UCLA, his Master’s in Education Technology and Curriculum from Grand Canyon University, and Bachelor’s from Cal State Long Beach.

Professor
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
New York University

Pamela Morris-Perez is a Professor of Applied Psychology at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and an Affiliated Professor at the NYU School of Global Public Health. 

Morris-Perez conducts research at the intersection of developmental psychology, suicidology, education, and policy. She has secured over $75M in funding and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and policy reports. Complementing research with institutional leadership, Morris-Perez oversaw 300 multi-disciplinary faculty as Vice Dean and Interim Dean at NYU Steinhardt from 2015-2020, overseeing a rise in annual research expenditures from $27 to $39M and the transition of 7,000 students to remote instruction during COVID-19. 
 
Morris-Perez currently conducts an IES-funded partnership with NYCs Department of Education to support expansion of Universal Pre-k and an NIH-funded randomized trial of a parenting intervention within primary care. She recently launched A Research Center for Adolescent Interconnected Approaches (ARCADIA) for Suicide Prevention. A former William T. Grant scholar, Morris served as lead editor of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and a member of the National Academy of Science’s Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She earned a B.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University.

President
Spencer Foundation

Na’ilah Suad Nasir is the sixth President of the Spencer Foundation, funding education research nationally. Prior to joining Spencer, she held a faculty appointment in Education and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where she also served as the chair of African American Studies, then later as the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion. She also served on the Faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.  Nasir is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She is President (2021-2022) of the American Educational Research Association.

President Emeritus
Miami Dade College

Eduardo Padrón is President Emeritus of Miami Dade College, a national model of student achievement and the largest degree granting institution in America.

In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Eduardo Padrón the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., for being a prominent national voice for access and inclusion in higher education. In 2009, Time magazine included him among the “10 Best College Presidents” in the United States; in 2010, Florida Trend magazine named him “Floridian of the Year”; and in 2011, The Washington Post recognized him as one of the eight most influential college presidents nationwide.

Dr. Padrón is the recipient of the Carnegie Corporation’s Centennial Academic Leadership Award, the National Citizen Service Award from Voices for National Service, and the Hesburgh Award, the highest honor in U.S. higher education. He is also an Ascend Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Six American Presidents have selected Dr. Padrón to serve on posts of national prominence. He serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Urban Institute, the Spencer Foundation and The Education Trust. He is the past chairman of the Business-Higher Education Forum, the American Council on Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. He’s the recipient of over fifteen honorary doctorates.

Associate Professor of Education and Economics
Center for the Study of Educators
Brown University

John P. Papay is an Associate Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, where he leads the Center for the Study of Educators at the Annenberg Institute. His research focuses on the ways in which policies affect the educational outcomes of students. His work clusters in two main areas. The first involves inequality in educational outcomes as students progress from high school to college and into the career. The second explores how policies affect teachers and their work, including teacher hiring, teacher development, and teacher retention. His recent work has focused on building robust research-practice partnerships to engage practitioners in conducting research to inform policy and practice. He has served as PI/Project Director for two large IES research-practice partnership grants in Tennessee and Massachusetts and has helped launch a new partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Education/Providence Public Schools. He is on the founding leadership team for the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL), a collaboration of researchers and professional learning organizations to support research on teacher development. He is a former high school history teacher and a former Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow and NAEd/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow. 

President
National Education Association

NEA president Becky Pringle is a fierce social justice warrior, defender of educator rights, an unrelenting advocate for all students and communities of color, and a valued and respected voice in the education arena. A middle school science teacher with 31 years of classroom experience, Becky is singularly focused on using her intellect, passion, and purpose to unite the members of the largest labor union with the entire nation, and using that collective power to transform public education into a racially and socially just and equitable system that is designed to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.

Becky’s passion for students and educators, combined with her first-hand classroom experience, equip her to lead the movement to reclaim public education as a common good. Becky was elected in 2020 as COVID-19 ravaged Black, Brown, and indigenous communities nationwide.

Before assuming NEA’s top post, Becky served as NEA vice president and before that as NEA secretary-treasurer. She directed NEA’s work to combat institutional racism, and spotlight systemic patterns of racism and educational injustice that impact students. Under Becky’s guidance, NEA works to widen access and opportunity by demanding changes to policies, programs, and practices. The Association’s goal is to ensure the systemic, fair treatment of people of all races so that equitable opportunities and outcomes are within reach for every student. This is why Becky is a staunch advocate for students who have disabilities, identify as LGBTQ+, are immigrants, or English Language Learners.

Those who know Becky best know that she is also a passionate Philadelphia Eagles fan, loves anything purple, and for two special someones holds the coveted title of “Best Nana B” in the world.

Professor of Education and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Cecilia Rios-Aguilar is Professor of Education and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies (Ed&IS). Currently, she also serves as a faculty Co-Director of Policy Analysis of California Education (PACE), as a Board Member of the Spencer Foundation, and as a research affiliate of Wheelhouse: The Center for the Community College Leadership and Research at UC Davis. She is past Director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Her research is multidisciplinary and uses a variety of asset-based conceptual frameworks—funds of knowledge, community cultural wealth and the forms of capital—and of statistical approaches—econometric models, multilevel models, spatial analyses and GIS, and social network analysis—to study the educational and occupational trajectories of marginalized students. Dr. Rios-Aguilar’s 2011-2014 research project, “Getting Connected: Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Enhance Community College Student Success,” was funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project explored the use of social media technology to connect and engage community college students in ways that improve success outcomes.

Currently, Dr. Rios-Aguilar is examining how community college students make decisions about majors, jobs, and careers and the impact of strategic nudges to help community college students navigate the financial aid process. Her latest co-edited book, published by Routledge, Funds of Knowledge in Higher Education: Honoring Students’ Cultural Experiences and Resources as Strengths, refines and builds on the concept of funds of knowledge in a sophisticated and multidisciplinary way to examine issues related to access and transition to college, college persistence and success, and pedagogies in higher education. Dr. Rios-Aguilar obtained her Ph.D. in Education Theory and Policy from the University of Rochester, her M.S. in Educational Administration from the University of Rochester, and her B.A. in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México [ITAM].

Assistant Professor
University of Nevada, Reno

Ethan W. Ris is an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he co-directs the Higher Education Administration program. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He has been the recipient of a Spencer/NAEd postdoctoral fellowship and a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Ris is a historian of education, with a primary focus on higher education in the United States. His work examines the interplay of the state, third-sector organizations, and colleges and universities in shaping educational policy, especially regarding the form and functions of undergraduate education.

Ris’ first book, Other People’s Colleges: The Origins of American Higher Education Reform (2022, University of Chicago Press) analyzes the work of large philanthropic foundations and their allies in government in reshaping higher education in the first half of the 20th century. Under the mantra of “efficiency,” these reformers poured wealth derived from the Rockefeller and Carnegie fortunes into a nationwide effort to make the lower tiers of higher education more standardized, more practical, and more restrictive, especially to students with marginalized identities. The reformers largely failed in their efforts, but they left indelible legacies like the creation of the community college. The struggle over reform also led to a novel consensus about the public purposes of college that set the stage for the mid-century “Golden Age” of American higher education. 

Assistant Superintendent of Academics
Seattle Public Schools

Dr. Keisha Scarlett is Assistant Superintendent of Academics for Seattle Public Schools and formerly served as Chief of Equity, Partnerships, and Engagement. Her professional practice and research are on PK-12 systems movement building and stakeholder engagement in racial equity and system change. Since 2016, she and several colleagues from Seattle Public Schools and Seattle Education Association have partnered with University of Washington scholar/researchers in a research-practice partnership focused on systemic racial equity.  

Dr. Scarlett's educational leadership experiences range from her early career in the STEM field at The Boeing Company to middle school teacher, principal, and numerous central office leadership positions in Seattle Public Schools. Dr. Scarlett has dedicated her career to advocating for academic opportunities and environments that tap into students' inherent brilliance, particularly those furthest from educational justice.  

Chief Investment and Impact Officer
Blue Meridian Partners

Director, Education
Raikes Foundation

Zoë Stemm-Calderon joined the Raikes Foundation in 2015 to lead its education strategy. Before joining the foundation, Zoë served as a resident at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation while completing her doctorate in education leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously, Zoë was assistant superintendent of professional support and development at Houston Independent School District (ISD). Prior to her work in Houston ISD, Zoë was a senior leader at Teach for America, where she spent her 10-year tenure focused on advancing the organization's approach to teacher, coach and manager development. Zoë began her career as an elementary school teacher in Houston. Zoe lives in Seattle with her partner Andre and her two daughters.  

Professor of Educational Foundations, Leadership & Policy
Department of Educational Studies
University of Michigan

Camille M. Wilson, Ph.D., is a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and Professor of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Policy at the University of Michigan. She explores the intersections of school-family-community engagement, urban educational reform, and transformative leadership. Within this work, she highlights the educational advocacy, activism, and choices of families and communities of color. Dr. Wilson centers critical, gendered, and racial justice perspectives. In addition to publishing her scholarship extensively in national and international venues, her research and commentary have been featured in prominent media outlets like the New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar. Actively collaborating with youth, families, and community activists in national and regional educational improvement initiatives is another vital aspect of her work. Dr. Wilson is currently the principal investigator of a research practice-partnership devoted to helping dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit. The RPP links several, community-engaged research teams and the Detroit-based civil rights organization Focus:HOPE. In 2020, Dr. Wilson founded the University of Michigan School of Education’s CREATE Center. The CREATE Center fosters community-based research on equity, activism, and transformative education.