Rebecca Grainger served her first decade in education as department chair and high school science teacher at Sierra High School in Colorado Springs, CO. She is recognized as a Distinguished Educator and Hall of Fame Distinguished Alumna. As a Fellow at the Institute for Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Grainger served as a scholar practitioner bridging the divide between education research and the K-12 classroom. Through professional development, curriculum design, and partnering with researchers she pushed the boundaries between educator and student roles, asking learners to create the learning environment in partnership.

Grainger holds her doctorate in Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her capstone work in Somerville Public Schools centered on the use of data to interrogate policy and practice to strategically redesign inequitable systems with a focus on reimagining racial and ethnic categorization as a catalyst for larger systemic change.  Prior to joining the Wu administration, Grainger led the instructional design for Black Futures Lab’s Black Policy Institute, a 30-week policy advocacy and leadership training fellowship designed to prepare selected Fellows to make legislative and policy interventions that advance Black political power, change the way power operates, and improve the lives of Black people.

For over 20 years Grainger has created learning spaces designed to interrogate systems which bolster racial inequities and our contributions to their continued propagation.  She is driven by the belief that the role of educational spaces is not to save, but to act with intentionality to increase access to opportunity and provide space for informed choice.