Mira-Lisa Katz is an Associate Director with WestEd’s Learning and Technology team.
Katz supports research and development projects focused on digital teaching and learning, professional learning, and literacy at the secondary and postsecondary levels. She develops tools and resources for student and teacher learning and disseminates research findings. Katz served as a content specialist for the 2026 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Framework Update for which the NAEP team received WestEd’s 2022 Paul D. Hood award for distinguished contribution to the field. She currently serves as the Board Vice President of the SEL Providers Association.
Katz is Professor Emerita of English at Sonoma State University (SSU), where she taught courses in literacy studies, applied linguistics, and English education from 2002 through 2016. While at SSU, she also coauthored California State University’s evidence-based Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum, now taught in over half of California’s high schools.
Katz has led professional learning workshops for teachers and teacher educators and supported teacher professional learning in states across the country. She co-edited the Leading Literacy Change column for the International Reading Association’s Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy from 2018 through 2020 and edited a book on multimodality called Moving Ideas, published in 2013 by Peter Lang.
Katz earned an MA and a PhD in language, literacy, and culture from the University of California, Berkeley; an MFA in dance and creative practice from Saint Mary’s College of California; and a BA in French and linguistics from Mills College.