Na’ilah Suad Nasir is the sixth President of the Spencer Foundation, which funds education research nationally. Prior to joining Spencer, she held a faculty appointment in Education and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where she also served as department chair, then later as the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion. Her scholarship focuses on the learning sciences, and how what we know about learning has implications for how we design schools for equity. In her foundation work, she has worked to bring an equity lens to grant-making, and has spearheaded innovative funding opportunities rooted in the promise of research to support more equitable education systems.

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. She is a Past President of the American Educational Research Association and serves on the board of Sage Publications, the National Equity Project, and the UC Berkeley Board of Visitors.