Jen began her education career as a teacher in the San Francisco public schools, and has since worked as a reading specialist, literacy coach, and language arts director in the Massachusetts public schools, as well as a curriculum and professional development designer for national nonprofits. Her education writing has appeared in Greater Good Magazine (UC Berkeley), The Reading Teacher, Literacy Today, and ASCD Express.

The question of how to make our teaching of language and literacy more liberatory, inspiring, and sustaining for all children has been a thread that has run through all of Jen’s work, most noticeably in curriculum and projects she has worked on for multilingual learners. 

Jen holds a Ph.D. in English literature from University of Virginia, a M.Ed. in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. with high honors in English from Oberlin College.