Dr. Gerardo Ramirez

Dr. Gerardo Ramirez obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied the role of teachers and parents in shaping the math attitudes of their students, as well as reappraisal techniques to help students cope with anxiety during testing situations.

Dr. Ramirez is currently an associate professor at Ball State, where he examines the role of frustration, empathy, and cultural capital in shaping students’ success and persistence.

Dr. Erin Maloney

Dr. Erin Maloney is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa. Her research sits at the intersection of Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Education and focuses on cognitive and emotional factors that relate to academic achievement. She is a world-renowned expert on the study of math anxiety, conducting research in the lab, in homes, and in classrooms with children, parents, and their teachers.

Rosemarie T. Truglio

Dr. Rosemarie T. Truglio is the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content at Sesame Workshop. Dr. Truglio is responsible for the development of the interdisciplinary curriculum on which Sesame Street is based and oversees content development across platforms (e.g., television, publishing, toys, home video, and theme park activities).  She also oversees the curriculum development for all new show production, including  Bea’s Block, Mecha Builders, Esme & Roy, Helpsters, and Ghostwriter. Dr. Truglio has written numerous articles in child and developmental psychology journals and presented her work at national and international conferences. Her current book is Ready for School! A Parent’s Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5, published by Running Press (2019).

Kanchan Kant

As a math and computer science teacher at Newton North High School, Newton, MA, Kanchan has been sharing her love for math with her students for the past four years. Kanchan is instrumental in setting the culture and ethos of the mathematics department at her school in her role as the Assistant Department Head. In her new role as a Transformative Leaders of Massachusetts Fellow in collaboration with Springpoint and Barr Foundation, Kanchan looks forward to making the joy of learning the foundation of many more classrooms.

Sarah Strong and Gigi Butterfield

Sarah Strong is the co-author of Dear Math. She has taught math and science to grades 6 through 12 at High Tech High in San Diego, and she also works for the High Tech High Graduate School of Education teaching various math pedagogy courses and supporting new math teachers in the organization.

Gigi Butterfield is the co-author of Dear Math. She is currently a screenwriting major at Loyola Marymount University and a former student of the Gary and Jeri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High in San Diego. She thrives in situations where she can explore math deeply and ask thoughtful questions of her peers and her teachers. Gigi has attended project-based learning schools since the age of five and, even in college, is passionate about how PBL plays an integral role in revitalizing heavily antiquated math pedagogies.

Howie Hua

Howie Hua is a math instructor at Fresno State University who teaches math to future elementary school teachers. He is passionate about finding ways to humanize the math classroom, listening to how students think about math, and building mathematical confidence in students. In 2019, Howie was named Outstanding Lecturer for the College of Science and Math at his university. Outside of school, Howie likes to play piano, go on walks, make math memes, and make math explainer videos.

Allison Hintz and Antony Smith

Dr. Allison Hintz’s research and teaching are in the area of mathematics education. Her focus on mathematics came about during her years as a fifth grade teacher – it was alongside her students that she developed her own positive identity as a mathematician! Today she studies teaching and learning, specifically facilitating engaging discussion. Her research and teaching happen in partnership with educators and children in formal and informal settings and focuses on beliefs and practices that support all children in lively mathematics learning. She is a co-author, with Elham Kazemi, of Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions.

Antony T. Smith is an associate professor of literacy education at the University of Washington, Bothell. He works alongside teachers to create engaging literacy-mathematics learning experiences through exploring and discussing children’s literature. He is committed to the concepts of motivation, engagement, challenge, and creativity in literacy teaching and learning.

Elham Kazemi

Elham Kazemi is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Washington. She studies how strong professional communities develop in schools and how schools can be organized so teachers learn from and with their students. This work is informed by research on organizational learning, children’s mathematical thinking, and classroom practice.  She is co-author with Allison Hintz of Intentional Talk, which focuses on leading productive discussions in mathematics. She also edited Choral Counting and Counting Collections with Megan Franke and Angela Turrou, which focuses on the importance of counting from preschool to 5th grade.

Valerie Henry, Graham Fletcher, and Tracy Johnston Zager

Valerie Henry has been a math educator since 1986. She taught middle school math for 17 years and has worked as a lecturer at University of California Irvine since 2002. After doing her 2004 dissertation research on addition/subtraction fluency in first grade, Valerie created FactsWise, a daily mini-lesson approach that simultaneously develops fluency, number sense, and algebraic thinking. Additionally, she has provided curriculum and math professional development for K-12 teachers throughout her career, working with individual schools, districts, county offices of education, Illustrative Mathematics, the SBAC Digital Library, and the UCI Math Project.

Graham Fletcher has served in education as a classroom teacher, a math coach, and currently as a math specialist. He is continually seeking new and innovative ways to support students and teachers in their development of conceptual understanding in elementary mathematics. He is the author of Building Fact Fluency and openly shares many of his resources at gfletchy.com.

Tracy Johnston Zager is a district math coach who loves to get teachers hooked on listening to kids’ mathematical ideas. She is a co-author of the Building Fact Fluency toolkits and the author of Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You’d Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms. Tracy also edits professional books by teachers, for teachers at Stenhouse Publishers.

Lani Horn

Lani Horn centers her research on ways to make authentic mathematics accessible to students, particularly those who have been historically marginalized by our educational system. Professor Horn focuses primarily on mathematics teaching in two ways. First, Professor Horn looks at classroom practices that engage the most students in high-quality mathematics. Second, Professor Horn views teaching as a contextually-embedded practice – how school environments, communities, colleagues, and policies shape what is instructionally possible. All of this is unified through a pursuit to understand teacher learning as a situative phenomenon.

Heidi Sabnani

Heidi Sabnani is always surprised that she works in math education. She developed math anxiety as a young student and spent much of her school life and early career avoiding math. After teaching English in the United States and Guatemala, and earning her MA in World Literature, she found herself in the uncomfortable position of working in math classrooms as a school improvement consultant. Once she realized that her life was going to involve math, Heidi decided to relearn math in the ways she wished she had learned the first time around. 18 years later she is still learning with and from the students and teachers she has the privilege to serve.

Heidi’s doctoral research at Northeastern University focused on interventions for math anxiety in elementary teachers. She currently works as a consultant, speaker, and author.

Marjorie Schaeffer

Marjorie Schaeffer is an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Saint Mary’s College. She received her Ph.D in developmental psychology from the University of Chicago. Marjorie is interested in the role parents and teachers play in the development of children’s math attitudes and performance. She is specifically interested in the impact of expectations and anxiety and on children’s academic performance. Her work has been published in outlets including Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Developmental Science.

Jennifer Carolan

Jennifer Carolan is co-founder and general partner at Reach Capital, a venture capital fund that supports entrepreneurs bringing leading-edge technology to education. She started her career as a classroom teacher in Chicago, where she taught for seven years in traditional district schools. She moved to Silicon Valley in 2000 to attend Stanford University and used her teaching experience to support edtech founders at the NewSchools Venture Fund. She co-created and taught the popular course Innovations In Teaching at Stanford University and co-founded her first fund NewSchools Seed Fund in 2011. She co-founded Reach Capital in 2015. Reach is an education technology fund based in San Francisco. They are currently investing in Reach 4— a $215 million fund focused on education technologies designed to improve access to opportunity.

Kristen Moore

Kristen Moore is a veteran mathematics educator who believes that math class should be about more than just solving for x. Kristen enables students to grow in both their confidence and capabilities in the secondary math classroom, with real, relevant, and rigorous learning experiences. In her classroom, Kristen provides engaging mathematical experiences from projects to problem-based learning (PBL), turning students into problem solvers instead of calculators–and unlocking students’ potential to become problem solvers of the future. Kristen started her own company, called, Moore than Just X, LLC, and the Modern Math Teacher podcast, providing teachers with training and resources that bring authentic learning experiences to the math classroom. Through project-based learning, Kristen helps teachers focus on connecting students and standards, boosting engagement, and bringing life back to the math classroom.

Jason Zimba

Jason serves as Amplify’s chief academic officer of STEM. Previously, he co-founded Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping teachers and school leaders implement high-quality, college and career-ready standards. Jason is a Rhodes scholarship recipient and a former professor of physics and mathematics. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Williams College, with a double major in mathematics and astrophysics; a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Oxford; and a doctorate in mathematical physics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Valerie Henry Ed.D.

Valerie Henry, Ed.D. has been a math educator since 1986. She taught middle school math for 17 years and has worked as a lecturer at UC Irvine since 2002. After doing her 2004 dissertation research on addition/subtraction fluency in first grade, Valerie created FactsWise, a daily mini-lesson approach that simultaneously develops  fluency,  number sense and algebraic thinking. Thousands of teachers have used Valerie’s  books, classroom videos, screencasts, and online courses for addition/subtraction and multiplication/division to integrate fluency into their daily routines.

Valerie has provided curriculum and math professional development for K-12 teachers throughout her career, working with individual schools, districts, county offices of education, Illustrative Mathematics, the SBAC Digital Library, and the UCI Math Project. She has  an Ed.D. from UCLA/UCI and a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics from UC Davis, is credentialed in both Multiple and Single Subject mathematics and received National Board Certification in early adolescent mathematics.

Art Baroody, Ph.D.

Art Baroody is currently a Professor Emeritus of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in educational and developmental psychology from Cornell University in 1979. His research focuses on early childhood mathematics education—specifically, the development of number counting and arithmetic concepts and skills from two to eight years of age. He is the co-author of the widely used Test of Early Mathematics Ability (3rd edition; published 2003 by Pro-Ed). He is a co-author of the 2013 What Works Clearinghouse Teaching math to young children: A practice guide published by the U.S. Department of Education. A focus of his research, which was supported by two Department of Education grants, is how to foster fluency with the basic arithmetic combinations. Art is currently the Principal Investigator for two National Science Foundation grants to develop an electronic test of early numeracy.

Nicole M. Joseph, Ph.D.

Nicole M. Joseph is an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab (JMEL), and is the founder and director of Black Girls Becoming Summer Research Institute, a two-week residential program at Vanderbilt for rising 7th and 8th grade Black girls focused on a holistic STEAM curriculum.

Lauren Carr

Lauren Carr is a kindergarten and first grade teacher in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a masters in education. She is a guiding teacher with the UCLA Teacher Education Program and a math coach with the UCLA Math Project. She is passionate about social justice and understanding students’ mathematical thinking.

John W. Staley, Ph.D.

John W. Staley has been involved in mathematics education for over 35 years as a secondary mathematics teacher, adjunct professor, district and national leader, author, advisor, and consultant. His life work continues to focus on Changing the Narrative about who is seen as being doers, learners, and teachers of mathematics.

Jennifer Bay-Williams, Ph.D.

Jennifer Bay-Williams is a mathematics education professor at the University of Louisville. She is passionate about ensuring every student develops competence and confidence in mathematics. She has written over 30 books, including two book series on mathematics fluency – Math Fact Fluency and Figuring out Fluency. She is also an author on the iconic Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally and a popular workshop facilitator and presenter, engaging teachers and teacher leaders in supporting real math fluency.

Jody Guarino, Ed.D.

Jody Guarino is a teacher educator with two decades of classroom teaching experience.  In her current role as lecturer at University of California, Irvine School of Education and part of the Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Leadership Collaborative at Orange County Department of Education, she supports student, teacher, and administrator learning and practice.

Myuriel von Aspen

Myuriel is the multiple subject coordinator for the MAT + Credential program at the University of California, Irvine. She has both teaching and coaching experience in elementary schools in Orange County, California, including seven years as a first and fourth grade teacher in a Spanish-English dual immersion school. She has worked in projects with Student Achievement Partners, UnboundED, and Illustrative Mathematics. Myuriel holds a bachelor of science in computer science from the Florida International University, and a master of business administration and master of arts in teaching from the University of California, Irvine. The core belief that drives her work is that all children are capable of learning challenging math. Our role as educators is to remove barriers, provide access and opportunities for children to make sense, engage in meaningful discussions, and develop their identities as competent doers and learners.

Fawn Nguyen

Fawn Nguyen began her work with Amplify in 2022 as a Math Teaching & Learning Specialist. She was a math coach for a K-8 school district for three years, and a middle school teacher for 30 years before that. Nguyen has also received a number of accolades as an educator.