Chelsea Waite

Chelsea Waite is an education researcher focused on how schools and school systems attempt to bring about more equitable and student-centered learning environments. As a Research Principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (crpe.org), she uses innovation theory and organizational theory lenses to understand uncommon learning models, what effect they have on students, families, and teachers, and what stands in the way of their success. She is motivated by a belief that public schools play a key role in enabling all young people to thrive, but to do this equitably and systemically, they must embrace change rather than defaulting to old ways of working. Through her research, writing, and speaking, she aims to help district leaders, policymakers, philanthropic leaders, and advocates navigate barriers that stand in the way of implementing and sustaining change. 

Chelsea is a leader of the Canopy project, where she and a team of collaborators at CRPE and Transcend work with hundreds of organizations nationwide to identify innovation efforts in a diverse range of schools and learning environments. She has a particular focus on high school innovation, as well as how school systems can both enable and stymie school-level change. She is also interested in technology for learning and innovations developed by community organizations and families on the margins of K-12 education.

Before joining CRPE, Chelsea was an education research fellow at the Christensen Institute studying innovative school models, school change, student agency, and models for peer-to-peer support in K–12. Prior to this, she built partnerships and designed learning programs at Digital Promise, and taught English as the postsecondary level in the northeast of Brazil. Chelsea holds a BA in History from Brown University and an MSt in Social Innovation from Cambridge University. She is accredited by the Partnership Brokers Association as a facilitator of multi-stakeholder collaborations.