Laura Gutmann, Ph.D., is the Research & Storytelling lead at reDesign. She
loves finding creative ways to make educational research useful and engaging.
Her work in education over the past two decades has focused on 1) examining
policy systems and structures that impact classroom practice, 2) developing
innovative resources that support learner-centered practices within those
systems, and 3) exploring how educators apply those new resources and tools to
their own contexts.

Laura previously served as the Director of Deeper Learning Initiatives at the
Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE). In that role, she
led the Hewlett Fostering Deeper Learning project and collaborated with higher
education institutions across the U.S. and in Finland to design online modules
and applied activities that built beginning teachers’ capacity to support deeper
learning for all students. Other major projects included partnering with middle
and high school teachers to research custom measures of social-emotional
learning, working globally to create an International Baccalaureate teacher
development system for professional growth, providing support for nationally-
implemented measures of readiness of teach, and developing Stanford’s
Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB). She was part of the
California Education Policy Fellowship Program in 2017-18.

Laura received her doctoral degree in Education from UNC-Chapel Hill, where
her research examined how new teacher evaluation policies influenced early
elementary teachers’ professional growth and instruction. While at UNC, she
contributed to the FirstSchool project, co-edited, “FirstSchool: Transforming
PreK-3 rd Grade for African American, Latino, and Low-Income Children”
(Teachers College Press), and partnered with a charter network in Washington,
DC as a 2010 Education Pioneers Fellow. One of her favorite research projects
integrated teacher-curated photographs of their learning environments with case
examples of resources that shaped their approach to classroom design. Prior to
that, Laura was the Vice President of Programs for a nonprofit that provided life
skills curriculum to 90,000+ students across NYC each year, and taught
kindergarten in the Bronx. She earned her Master’s in Early Childhood
Education from Bank Street College and received a B.A. in Public Policy Studies
from Duke University.

Aside from her professional interests, you can find Laura exploring the Bay Area
and getting out in nature, taking cooking classes, examining issues of equity and
representation with other parents and educators in her local school, and taking
courses in the certificate program at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies.