Susan Headden has been named senior associate for public policy engagement at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She will initially focus on teacher improvement and student motivation as a member of Carnegie’s Washington, D.C. team.

Most recently, Headden was the managing editor at Education Sector, a leading independent education think tank, where she wrote on a number of topics, including the Common Core State Standards and assessments, college remediation, and teacher evaluation. She has also worked as an independent communications consultant.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Headden has extensive experience in editing, investigative reporting, and education writing. She spent many years at U.S. News & World Report, having served as assistant managing editor for national news, investigations, and education, and as managing editor of the magazine’s newsstand book division. Headden also supervised the magazine’s annual “America’s Best Leaders” project in collaboration with the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

The Carnegie Foundation is committed to developing networks of ideas, individuals, and institutions to advance teaching and learning. We join together scholars, practitioners, and designers in new ways to solve problems of educational practice. Toward this end, we work to integrate the discipline of improvement science into education with the goal of accelerating the field’s capacity to learn to improve.

We are an operating foundation located in Stanford, California.