Naomi Ondrasek serves as a Sacramento-based policy advisor and senior researcher for the Learning Policy Institute. She previously worked on the California Assembly Education Committee, where she served as a California Council on Science and Technology science fellow. As a fellow, she reviewed, analyzed, amended, and drafted legislation covering a broad range of education policy issues, including child health, curriculum and instruction, college- and career-preparedness, and educational equity. She also staffed bills on STEM and special education for Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell.
Prior to her time in the California Legislature, Ondrasek spent a decade of her career training and working as a neuroscientist, with a professional focus on studying how brain chemicals, hormones, and the environment interact to influence social bonding and group formation. Her work spanned both the laboratory and field and was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), first through the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship during her doctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, and later through the NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship during her postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Davis.
Ondrasek received a Ph.D. from the UC Berkeley Department of Integrative Biology and a B.S. with honors in Biology from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.
