Aneesha Badrinarayan

Aneesha Badrinarayan is an education policy consultant and assessment expert whose work focuses on building instructionally relevant, student-centered systems of science assessment. She serves as an education policy consultant at Education First, supporting states and districts in developing meaningful teaching, learning, and assessment systems across content areas. Previously, she has led assessment initiatives and strategy at the Learning Policy Institute, where she directed state performance assessment projects, and at Achieve, where she worked on science standards implementation and innovative assessment systems. Over more than two decades, she has contributed to the development of high-quality instructional materials, classroom and state assessment systems (including work related to NAEP), and professional learning for educators and leaders.

Trained as a behavioral neuroscientist, Badrinarayan holds a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and an M.S. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, where she was a Rackham Regents Fellow and a Ruth L. Kirschstein Graduate Research Fellow through the National Institute of Mental Health. Her career began in informal science education and bench science, including work as an outreach program manager at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, where she developed inquiry-based science curricula for K–8 students. She is recognized as a national