President Announcement

Monday, Feb. 6, 2017

The Spencer Foundation Board of Directors is pleased to announce the selection of Dr. Na’ilah Suad Nasir to be the next president of the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. Dr. Nasir’s appointment follows a broad national search for an educational leader and scholar to head Spencer. “The Board is delighted to have recruited Dr. Nasir to the role of president, “said Deborah Loewenberg Ball, chair of the Board. “We are excited by her vision for education research and for the role that Spencer can play in the study and improvement of education, especially given the crucial need to build knowledge and tools to tackle educational inequities and the challenges of building and providing quality education.”

Na’ilah Suad Nasir currently serves as Vice-Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion at the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds the Birgeneau Chair in Educational Disparities in the Graduate School of Education and is jointly appointed in the African American Studies Department, where she has been on the faculty since 2008. She earned her PhD in Educational Psychology at UCLA in 2000, and was a member of the faculty in the School of Education at Stanford University from 2000 – 2008. Her program of research focuses on issues of race, culture, learning, and identity. She is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In 2016 she was the recipient of the AERA Division G Mentoring Award.

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to serve as President of the Spencer Foundation. This is a critical time in our nation, and ensuring and supporting high quality educational research is more important now than ever,” said Dr. Nasir.

Na’ilah Suad Nasir will succeed Dr. Michael McPherson, who has served as president of Spencer since 2003. He is enthusiastic about his successor: “I couldn’t be more excited about Na’ilah Nasir’s selection as president. I’m eager to see where our very talented and imaginative new president will lead this great foundation in the years to come.”

Dr. Nasir will assume the presidency effective July 1, 2017.

The Spencer Foundation, established in 1962 by Lyle M. Spencer, is intended by Spencer’s direction to investigate ways in which education, broadly conceived, can be improved around the world. Dedicated to the support of high quality research in education broadly construed, the Foundation supports research in education and related disciplines, research training for education in the United States and abroad, and a variety of fellowship programs at the pre-doctoral, post-doctoral and senior levels. The Foundation’s endowment is currently more than $500 million and the Foundation expects to award over $26 million in grants in 2016-2017. To learn more about the Spencer Foundation please visit: http://www.spencer.org/mission