Graduate Student

Ankita Rakhe

Ankita Rakhe (she/her) is a doctoral student in Cohort 2 of the Leaders in Equity and Democracy program. She has been a Student Affairs practitioner for 20 years with a deep investment in diversity, equity and inclusion advocacy; conflict mediation and restorative justice; and leadership coaching. She has previously worked at The Ohio State University; Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas); Santa Clara University and Stanford University. She currently works here at the University of California, Berkeley as the Associate Dean for Student Engagement where she oversees a cluster of...

Allison Matamoros

Allison Matamoros is a bilingual educator with 10 years of teaching experience in San Francisco Unified School District. She has taught grades 1 through 7 at Buena Vista Horace Mann K–8, a Spanish-English dual immersion school in the Mission District. Her work has focused on improving literacy outcomes and supporting multilingual learners.

Originally from the Chicagoland area, Allison is the daughter of Honduran immigrants and is deeply committed to public education as a tool for equity and empowerment. She holds a National Board Certification in Literacy and earned her teaching...

Alissa (Ali) Nakaji

Alissa Nakaji is a Master’s degree and Administrative Services Credential candidate in the 25th cohort of the Principal Leadership Institute at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Her academic interests include a commitment to equity, social- emotional learning, community engagement, and culturally responsive education to empower students’ identities and amplify their voices.

Alissa currently teaches 4th grade at Sunset Elementary in the San Francisco Unified School District, where she has taught for over a decade. A strong advocate for social-emotional learning and culturally...

Alexandrea Creer Kahn

Alexandrea Creer Kahn began her journey as a doctoral student in the Berkeley School of Education's Leaders for Equity and Democracy (LEAD) in 2023. Alexandrea's research areas of focus include equity within teacher education, teacher residencies, and identity affirming teacher education programming for teachers of color.

Alexandrea has led a career focusing on educational equity and justice through several roles in K–12 and higher ed including teacher; principal; district leader; and lecturer for Stanford University's STEP Program. Recent co-authored publications from Alexandrea...

Sarah Goulart

Sarah Goulart is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Berkeley School of Education, specializing in social research methods. As a first-generation student with a strong interest in the transfer student experience, Sarah's research focuses on the challenges in the transfer process. She examines the intersection of institutional policies and AI models aimed at facilitating cross-campus planning.

As a Chancellor's Fellow and a Gardner Fellow, Sarah is committed to fostering equitable educational systems. Drawing from her own experiences and a passion for advocacy, she believes that...

Zohal Shah

Zohal is a doctoral student in Berkeley's Learning Sciences and Human Development program. She fervently believes in including learners, practitioners, and community voices in research design and development. Through a collaborative approach, she aspires to understand how youth develop critical data and digital literacies through social and civic online engagement.

Most recently, Zohal was listed as a member of the 30 under 30 cohort for 2023 in learning leadership by the Learning Guild. Zohal has also supported research at Digital Promise, the Learning, Innovation, and Technology...

Yared Portillo

Yared Portillo is a Ph.D. candidate in Learning Sciences and Human Development at UC Berkeley’s School of Education with a focus on Language, Literacy, and Culture. She is a jaranera, leonera, guitarist, poet, and music teacher with over 15 years of experience. Raised in an agricultural Latine immigrant community in Santa María, California, her research interests sit at the intersection of music education, translanguaging pedagogies, and sociocultural approaches to learning. Yared’s research and teaching are influenced by her years as a grassroots immigrant rights community organizer in...

Zoe Silverman

Zoe Silverman is a doctoral candidate in Learning Sciences & Human Development at UC Berkeley. Her research engages video-based interaction analyses of talk, gaze, gesture, touch, space, and movement during facilitated education programs to illuminate how participants — both human and non-human — collaborate to do hands-on learning with objects in museums.

Zoe worked for more than a decade as an education specialist and program coordinator at a variety of arts and cultural institutions in Boston and Los Angeles. In previous lives, she was a high school social studies teacher and...

Yi Zhou

Yi (Joe) Zhou is an international student from China. He is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster at UC Berkeley's School of Education, advised by Professor Elliot Turiel. Yi is hugely interested in the broad topic of morality, and enjoys reading ethical theories and moral psychology. His own research is in the field of moral development.

He is currently looking at individuals' judgments about the desirability of doing the morally right thing and their practical decisions in social situations involving conflict between morality and self-interest. He is...

Xinyu (Celia) Wei

Xinyu (Celia) Wei is a second-year Master’s student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development program at the School of Education at UC Berkeley. As an international scholar from China, Xinyu desires to help students celebrate productive struggles, leverage everyday experiences, and develop intellectual and sociocritical thinking skills to tackle worldwide equity barriers within STEM education. Her mission guides her as an emergent researcher who works with classroom teachers and students to design and implement meaningful and culturally grounded mathematics and science...