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Christina Cipriano, PhD, is the inaugural Joseph W. and Alma W. Keilty Endowed Chair in Education and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directs the Education Collaboratory at the College of Education. Drawing on her decade of research at the Yale Child Study Center, where she maintains a secondary faculty appointment, Dr. Cipriano's work advances inclusive and equitable social and emotional learning research, practice, and policy with students and schools worldwide.
Her training spans the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a PhD from the Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development, a certificate in human rights and international justice from Boston College Law School, and postdoctoral training in psychology at Yale University, a formation that grounds her science in both rigorous methodology and an enduring commitment to equity and justice. She later joined the Yale Child Study Center as faculty, with leadership in research positions and advising across Education Studies, Psychology, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Cipriano founded her independent translational science organization, the Education Collaboratory, in 2023.
Dr. Cipriano is the PI and Director of numerous major federal and foundation grants supporting the centering of student intersectional identities in research and practice, the development and validation of novel school-based assessments and methodologies, and foundational evidence syntheses. She has published 130+ papers, commentaries, and reports spanning top-tier journals such as Child Development and the Review of Educational Research, and media outlets including The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, PBS, Education Week, Hechinger Report, the Hill among others.
Dr. Cipriano's contributions to the field have earned her some of its highest honors, including the Distinguished Contributions to Human Development Research from the American Educational Research Association (2025), the Exceptional Achievement in Educational Measurement from the National Council on Measurement in Education (2025), the Research-to-Policy Collaboration Scholar Award from the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center (2024), the National Voice of Change in Public Education Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (2023), and the Joseph A. Zins Award for Career Contributions to Action Research (2022). Her rigorous cross-sector translation of science has been cited in multiple bipartisan pieces of federal legislation supporting investments in US students and educators, and she has served across numerous workgroups for the US Department of Education.
Dr. Cipriano is a sought-after voice in psycholgical science and education. She regularly gives keynotes and invited lectures, and is a frequent guest on high profile podcasts and in media interviews across education, academia, and industry.
Her award-winning, best-selling book, Be Unapologetically Impatient: The Mindset Required to Change the Way We Do Things (2025), is essential reading for educators, providers, parents, and anyone committed to improving the lives of children and families, right now.
Dr. Cipriano currently serves on the Advisory Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Possible Zone, Understood, and the Special Olympics Global Research Collaborative.
A Yale Public Voices Fellow of the Op Ed Project and Jack Kent Cooke Scholar, she brings to her science her lived experience as a first-generation high school graduate and mother of four children who inspire her every day to "take the moon and make it shine for everyone."
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