Jennifer L.  O'Donoghue

Sr. Fellow and Deputy Director, Center for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution

Jennifer has dedicated the past 30 years to understanding and promoting inclusive education as a basis for democracy and social justice. At the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, Jenn leads the Gender Equality in and through Education workstream and coordinates the Echidna Global Scholars Program and the Learning and Action Alliance for Girls’ Agency (LAAGA). Her work explores how network-based, collaborative, and participatory research methodologies advance understanding to transform education systems in ways that interrupt existing patterns of inequality to ensure that marginalized young people are able to exercise agency in their own lives and in their communities. 

Prior to joining Brookings, Jennifer served as Research Director and General Director of Mexicanos Primero, a leading education policy research and advocacy organization in Mexico, where she coordinated studies on inclusive education, teacher professional learning, plurilingualism, and educational spending, as well as two comparative indexes to monitor efforts to promote inclusive education. She worked closely with teachers, civil society organizations and legislators to develop policy proposals during the Mexican constitutional education reform process and collaborated in the construction of the Latin American Learning Community for School Leadership (CALLER), part of the Latin American Education Network (REDUCA).

Jenn worked as an English teacher with refugees and immigrants in Thailand and the United States and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, and the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). She holds a B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University, an M.A. in public affairs from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in education policy and administration from Stanford University.