Ina Seok

Ina Seok is an educator, organizational leader, and PhD candidate interested in how individual learning and shifts in perspective can accumulate into collective action and institutional change. She currently serves as Interim Executive Director of ASU Local and Director of the Student Success Center at Arizona State University, where she leads multi-site student success and coaching strategies, develops new models of student support, builds cross-functional partnerships, and strengthens the organizational systems and capacity needed to sustain and expand their impact. Informed by her background in economics and education, Ina brings an economist’s way of thinking to organizational leadership—examining incentives, constraints, decision-making, and the conditions that enable individuals and organizations to change.

Prior to joining Arizona State University, Ina spent much of her career in K-12 education as a teacher and school leader. She served as a founding elementary school principal in Los Angeles and held leadership roles with charter school organizations, including Rocketship Education in San Jose and Explore Schools in Brooklyn. Her work across 18 schools in multiple states shaped her interest in the relationships among institutional structures, leadership, educator capacity, and meaningful organizational change. Ina began her career as a Teach For America corps member and first-grade teacher in San Jose.

Ina is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Innovation in Global Development at Arizona State University. Her doctoral research examines institutional change and collective action within education systems, with particular attention to the relationships among school leadership, teacher voice, and school climate. Drawing on transformative learning theory and problem-driven approaches to development, Ina is interested in how periods of disruption can challenge established assumptions and create conditions for locally driven institutional change.

Ina holds a B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in Economics and Education from Columbia University, and an M.Ed. in School Leadership from Columbia University. Across her professional practice and scholarship, she is particularly interested in the intersection of leadership, human development, institutional change, and the capacity of people within systems to shape the institutions in which they work and learn.