Shaping a liberatory vision for the future of K–12 math
Client: Gates Foundation Role: Project Lead Year: 2024
Led an 18-month participatory research engagement with students, teachers, and families to co-create a vision for math education in partnership with the Gates Foundation, KnowledgeWorks, and Optimistic Design. The work culminated in a 72-page public report and accompanying toolkit now used by technologists, policymakers, and educators to guide math innovation initiatives across the US.
The AskThe Gates Foundation sought an elevated, student-led vision of what K–12 math education could look like if it truly served every student to inform future foundation for grant-making and math innovation programming.
My RoleAs lead researcher and strategist on this 18-month engagement, I was responsible for the full arc of the research — from secondary research and landscape analysis, through a series of in-person co-design workshops with students, teachers, and families, to final synthesis and strategic framing. Working in close partnership with futurists from KnowledgeWorks and the design team at Optimistic Design, I shaped a research process that centered lived expertise without extracting it — one where the people most affected by math education became active participants in imagining its future.
What I DidConducted secondary landscape analyses across education policy, learning science, and edtech to ground the vision in evidence
Designed and led co-design workshops with students, teachers, and families to elevate perspectives from lived experts often excluded from innovation conversations
Coordinated with KnowledgeWorks futurists to integrate foresight methodology into the research framework, grounding future scenarios in present-day community insight
Synthesized findings into a coherent strategic framework built around liberatory mindsets, levers for change, and emerging technology principles
Led the development of the 72-page public report and an accompanying facilitator toolkit designed for real-world use by educators, policymakers, and technologists
OutcomesThe Modernizing Math report is now a publicly available resource informing the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges grant strategy. The accompanying toolkit — a card deck designed for classrooms, workshops, and product ideation sessions — gives practitioners a hands-on way to bring the vision into their own context. The project demonstrated that a genuine future for math education can only be built by the people who live inside it.