DR. REBECCA WINTHROP

Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution

Rebecca Winthrop is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on education globally, with special attention to the skills young people need to thrive in work, life, and as constructive citizens.

Winthrop works to promote quality and relevant education, including exploring how education innovations and family and community engagement can be harnessed to leapfrog progress, particularly for the most marginalized children and youth. 

She currently leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. She has served as the chair of the U.N. Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group, helping to frame an education vision that focuses on access, quality, and global citizenship. With UNESCO Institute of Statistics, she co-led the Learning Metrics Task Force that involved inputs from education professionals in over 100 countries to identify how to measure what matters in education systems. 

Prior to joining the Brookings Institution in June 2009, Winthrop spent 15 years working in the field of education for displaced and migrant communities. As the head of education for the International Rescue Committee, she was responsible for the organization’s education work in over 20 conflict-affected countries. She has been actively involved in developing the evidence base around and global attention to education in the developing world. 

Winthrop has authored numerous publications, including her recent book “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better” with her co-author, award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson. 

DR. JENNIFER PFEIFER

Professor, University of Oregon

Dr. Jennifer Pfeifer is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon and a leading researcher in adolescent brain development and mental health. Her work focuses on how changes in the brain, social environments, and self-perception shape decision-making, identity, and well-being during adolescence and young adulthood. Dr. Pfeifer’s research has been widely published and supported by major federal funding agencies, and she is recognized for translating complex developmental science into practical insights for educators, families, and policymakers. Through her work, she aims to shift how society understands and supports young people during this critical stage of life.

She studies the development of these related phenomena at multiple levels, with the goal of enabling healthy transitions from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Her research is focused on i) building a foundational knowledge base about normative and atypical trajectories of functional brain development supporting these social, affective/motivational, and regulatory processes - in particular, integrating the contributions of social processes and social cognitive brain function to our neurobiological models of adolescent development; and ii) using fMRI as a tool to advance our understanding of neurobiological mechanisms that put some adolescents at risk for adverse outcomes, or serve as protective factors for others. She is also interested in how functional brain development is affected by various endogenous and exogenous factors such as pubertal development and early adversity.

Her work has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation, and the Oregon Medical Research Foundation.