Linda Darling-Hammond
Faculty Co-Director, Stanford Educational Leadership Institute

Dr. Darling-Hammond is currently Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has served as the faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program and helped to launch the School Redesign Network and the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher education, and educational equity. From 1994-2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, provided a blueprint for transforming education to guarantee all children access to high quality teaching.  

Darling-Hammond is author or editor of eleven books, including The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work, which was awarded the Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association in 1998, and more than 200 journal articles, book chapters, and monographs on issues of policy and practice.   Her most recent book is Instructional Leadership for Systemic Change: The Story of San Diego's Reform.

Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Darling-Hammond was William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she was also Co-Director of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST). Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association, a two-term member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and a member of the National Academy of Education.  

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and has co-founded both a preschool and day care center and a charter public high school.   She has also served as Senior Social Scientist and Director of the RAND Corporation's Education and Human Resources Program and as director of the National Urban Coalition's Excellence in Education Program.