The Brinson Foundation

Michael Barber is a Senior Program Officer at The Brinson Foundation, a Chicago-based family foundation, which supports education and scientific research. He was previously a member of the program team at the Spencer Foundation, where he helped grow its capacity to engage in impactful grantmaking in education research. As a learning consultant, he has partnered with district and school leaders in Chicago Public Schools to connect research with practice, design improvement strategies, and build both learning-focused and internal monitoring tools. Michael has been a middle school, high school, and community college teacher as well as an instructional coach across school contexts. Michael also teaches in the College of Education at DePaul University, where he instructs, inspires, and mentors the next generation of educators. Michael has a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.