Na’ilah Nasir

Spencer Foundation

President

In 2017, Na’ilah Suad Nasir became the sixth President of the Spencer Foundation. She was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley from 2008-2017 and was selected as the second UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion in 2015. She also holds the Birgeneau Chair in Educational Disparities in the Graduate School of Education, and was previously the H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Chair of African American Studies. Nasir joined the Berkeley faculty in 2008 from the School of Education at Stanford University, where she earned the St. Claire Drake Teaching Award in 2007. The author of Racialized Identities: Race and achievement for African-American youth, published by the Stanford University Press in 2011, Nasir’s research examines the racialized and cultural nature of learning and schooling. She is interested in the intertwining of social, cultural, and political contexts and learning, especially in connection with inequity in educational outcomes. Nasir also published over 30 articles in scholarly journals. In 2017, Nasir was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education. The National Academy of Education (NAEd) advances high quality education research and its use in policy and practice. Nasir has also been an integral member of the UC Berkeley Resident Faculty Program where faculty integrate themselves into student life and provide support for students by living alongside them in the residence halls. In this role, she worked with Resident Faculty colleagues to promote academic achievement and to create an inclusive and comfortable community that encourages personal growth and development. She strives to integrate her scholarly work with her commitment to community and engaged scholarship. Nasir received her BA in 1993 from UC Berkeley (Social Welfare and Psychology) and her PhD in 2000 from UCLA (Psychological Studies in Education).