As a Senior Researcher and Project Director with WestEd’s Research-Practice Partnerships team, BethAnn Berliner brings education, health, and social services systems together to improve academic and well-being outcomes for preK–12 students, focusing on the whole child.
Berliner brings expertise in leading policy and applied research studies, and in providing coaching and technical support to communities and schools through cross-sector and place-based interventions. She has extensive experience working with highly mobile students, students who are English learners and newcomers, students in foster care, chronically absent students, students who dropped out, and other vulnerable groups. Berliner’s work on dropout recovery and students in foster care has been widely cited, influencing federal and state policy and local practice.
Working more directly with underserved communities, she has contributed to successful after-school, tutoring, mentoring, gang prevention, counseling, family support, health care, and youth development programs. As a member of the Regional Educational Laboratory West, she leads a research partnership with schools, districts, school-based health centers, and other agencies in California’s rural Central Valley.
Prior to joining WestEd, Berliner directed several social service agencies and served as an archivist, curating historical photograph and manuscript collections. She also authored studies of Progressive Era school reform.
Berliner is an active volunteer and board member at several youth-serving agencies and a member of a national newcomers community of practice.
She received an MA in social history from the University of Colorado, and an MPA in public policy from San Francisco State University.