Laura E. Hernández is a Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute and co-leads the Whole Child Education team. She specializes in designing and conducting qualitative research on whole child approaches and the systems and structures that enable them. 

Her work is informed by her 9 years of classroom teaching as well as her interdisciplinary research training focused on education policies and the factors that affect their equitable and democratic implementation. For her research, Hernández has received many honors, including being named a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow and being awarded AERA’s Division A Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2018. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Policy, Urban Education, and Teachers College Record. 

Hernández holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of California, Berkeley; an MST from Pace University in New York City; and a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.