Dina Kapengut

Dr. Dina Kapengut is the Director of Research & Development for Assessment for Good. She is a researcher, strategist, and developmental psychologist with experience influencing R&D for equity-oriented interventions and assessments, as well as for new digital media, software and consumer products, and EdTech in the academic, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors. Dina’s research career originated from her commitment to social justice, education equity, and positive identity development for students experiencing poverty — a commitment which has taken her from psychoeducational fieldwork in rural classrooms in India and refugee camps in Europe to the evaluation, building, and implementation of academic assessment tools and interventions at research labs at NYU, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. Her interest in proactively intervening in students’ learning trajectories, especially those labeled “at-risk,” led to her research of socioeconomic disparities in child language and neurodevelopment and the ways in which measurement and assessment of the modifiable environmental differences that account for these disparities can inform the design of innovative, responsive interventions for marginalized populations. Dina earned her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.