Aneesha Badrinarayan

Aneesha Badrinarayan is an education policy consultant and national expert on science education and innovative assessment, focusing on supporting educators, districts, and states in developing meaningful teaching, learning, and assessment systems across content areas and strategies. Over the last 20 years, Aneesha has led work related to high-quality instructional materials, assessment system development from classroom assessments to state assessments to NAEP, and professional learning. Aneesha has led assessment initiatives and strategy at Education First, the Learning Policy Institute, and Achieve as well as in partnership with several curriculum and assessment developers and partner organizations. Trained as a behavioral neuroscientist, Aneesha comes to education policy via informal science education and bench science. She received her B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and her M.S. in neuroscience from the University of Michigan.

Aneesha lives in Maryland with her husband Dan and their fabulous toddler Rishi. When she isn’t playing the role of science assessment superhero, you can find her alter ego with her nose in a romance novel, her hands whisking something in the kitchen, and the rest of her body otherwise occupied with slowly transforming her house into a toddler play place (who needs a dining room, really?)