Chelsea Waite

Chelsea Waite is a research principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Her research focuses on how schools, districts, and communities are working to design more equitable and student-centered learning environments. In this work she uses innovation theory and organizational theory lenses to understand uncommon learning models, what effect they have on students, families, and teachers, and what systemic challenges stand in the way of their success. Her specific interests include high school redesign, equity and access, district innovation, and emerging technologies. Chelsea is a leader of the Canopy project (www.canopyschools.org), where she and a team of collaborators at CRPE and Transcend work with hundreds of organizations nationwide to identify innovation efforts in a diverse range of schools and learning environments through a two-part annual survey.

Chelsea holds an MSt in Social Innovation from Cambridge University and a BA in History from Brown University. Before joining CRPE, she was an education research fellow at the Christensen Institute studying innovative school models, school change, student agency, and models for peer-to-peer support. Prior to this, she designed learning programs and partnerships at Digital Promise and taught English as the postsecondary level in the northeast of Brazil. She is accredited by the Partnership Brokers Association as a facilitator of multi-stakeholder collaborations.