Na’ilah Suad Nasir
President, Spencer Foundation
Chicago, IL
Na’ilah Suad Nasir is the sixth President of the Spencer Foundation, which funds education research nationally that seeks to make education systems better for all learners. 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 a Vice Chancellor. She is a learning scientist whose scholarship focuses on theorizing the nature of learning, and how what we know about learning has implications for designing schools. In her foundation work, she has worked to bring an equity lens to grantmaking, and has spearheaded innovative funding opportunities rooted in the promise of research to support higher quality and more equitable education systems.
She co-chairs the board of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She is a Past President of the American Educational Research Association and serves on the board of Sage Publications, and the National Equity Project.