Dena Simmons

Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is the founder of LiberatED, a collective focused on developing school-based resources at the intersection of social and emotional learning (SEL), racial justice, and healing. She is the former Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society. Prior to her work at the Center, Simmons served as an educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer.

Simmons has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about social justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings, including the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, two TEDx talks, and a TED talk on Broadway. She has been profiled in Education Week, the Huffington Post, NPR, the AOL/PBS project, "MAKERS: Women Who Make America," and a Beacon Press Book, "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists."

Simmons is a recipient of a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a J. William Fulbright Fellowship, an Education Pioneers Fellowship, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, a Phillips Exeter Academy Dissertation Fellowship, a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, a Baldwin Fellowship, a Pahara-Aspen Fellowship, and an Arthur Vining Davis Aspen Fellowship among others. She earned her doctorate degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she served as faculty in the Summer Principals Academy.

Simmons' research interests include teacher preparedness to address bullying in the K-12 school setting, culturally responsive pedagogy, and the intersection of equity and SEL interventions with the goal of ensuring and fostering justice and safe spaces for all. She is the author of the forthcoming book, "White Rules for Black People."