Meet Our Team

Kristin De Vivo is the first Executive Director of Lucas Education Research, founded in 2013 as a sister division to Edutopia at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. LER's mission and strategy, developed by Kristin, focuses on building an evidence base to support transformative practices in K-12 education. Before heading LER, Kristin served as Vice President of Research and Validation at Scholastic Inc., from 2003 to 2013, where she implemented a continuous research and evaluation cycle that strategically improved the company’s blended-model interventions, setting the highest-quality benchmarks for research in educational publishing. Before joining Scholastic, Kristin worked at two Bay Area education-related start-ups, LeapFrog Enterprises and Scientific Learning. Prior to this work, she conducted extensive neuropsychological and achievement testing with young children and adults at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City and at the University of California at San Francisco. She received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.

Britte Haugan Cheng, Principal at Menlo Education Research, serves as a research adviser to Lucas Education Research. An established learning scientist who has contributed significantly to the Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR) literature base, Britte brings over a decade of research expertise to the Foundation. Britte's review and synthesis of the research underway will inform further refinement and enhancement of the Lucas Education Research portfolio. In addition to this work, Britte leads a collaboratory across grant partners designed to study the conditions in school systems that enable rigorous project-based learning. Britte received her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley’s Cognition and Development program, specializing in K-12 technology-based science curriculum and assessment.

Sheree Santos, Director of Curriculum and Technology Development, is the chief technology leader for LER and directs digital content development, delivery and management of all technology strategy and operations. She also oversees the curriculum development process for all curricular exemplars being developed in LER’s research studies. Prior to joining LER, Sheree spent eight years with Edgenuity, planning and developing online curricula as Social Studies Department Manager and, later, as Curriculum Quality Assurance Manager. She started her career in education by receiving concurrent bachelor’s degrees in secondary education and political science from Arizona State University. After a few years teaching high school and middle school social studies in Phoenix, Sheree earned her master’s in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in educational technology from Grand Canyon University.

Nathan Warner is the Director of Teaching and Learning at Lucas Education Research. Previously, he worked at the nonprofit EL Education in the role of Regional Director, where he led a team of instructional leaders in supporting schools and districts with implementing EL Education’s student-centered educational model. Nathan also worked at Lucas Education Research as a Senior Program Officer and Program Officer from 2014-2018 where he supported a number of research and development partnerships designed to gather evidence around the effectiveness of innovative project-based learning curricula, programs and instructional practices. Nathan began his career as a secondary social studies teacher and school leader in the New York City Department of Education for sixteen years, and during that time co-founded the nationally recognized Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School (WHEELS) in northern Manhattan. Nathan received his PhD in Sociology with a focus on education and social inequality from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).