Carol Hedgspeth, Ph.D.
Deputy Director
Carol Hedgspeth, Ph.D. (she/her/hers), started her career in the late 1990s in academia, teaching various core college courses in departments of Psychology and Education on the East Coast. She is also a seasoned education researcher, having worked for the past 25 years at various education advocacy and social science research firms, including Innovate Public Schools, WestEd, Cogent Integrations, LLC., the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), and American Institutes for Research. The through line for those varied professional experiences is a focus on understanding the optimal conditions for learning, particularly for learners who have been historically marginalized and disenfranchised.
Most recently, Carol served as the Vice President of Talent and Operations at Innovate Public Schools, an education advocacy nonprofit in San Jose. She focused on organizational strategy, policy oversight, staffing, and leadership development. Her most recent accomplishments have included creating internal structures to foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and belongingness in a multi-region, multi-team, multi-level organization; maintaining and enhancing talent recruitment and management strategies so that they are inclusive at every step; and managing day-to-day operations to support staff, boost effectiveness, and identify and root out processes, systems, and structures where inequities are harbored.
Carol received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and M.S. in Social Psychology from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and her B.S. in Psychology (minoring jointly in Women’s Studies and African American Studies) from the University of California at Berkeley.