Sarita Pillai, EDC vice president and a highly skilled leader of national technical assistance centers, works to enhance the quality and equity of pre-K–12 STEM education. She has expertise in workforce development, the future of work at the Human-Technology Frontier, technical support, strategic dissemination, and participatory design.
Sarita leads initiatives that focus on ensuring all youth build the foundational STEM skills they need to succeed in the workforce and postsecondary education. She is the principal investigator (PI) of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded STEM Learning and Research Center at EDC and the co-PI of NSF’s Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning.
Drawing on her background as a computer scientist, Sarita has led participatory design projects that engage middle and high-school-aged youth from underrepresented groups in developing innovative STEM resources. She is dedicated to closing opportunity gaps, advancing equity in education, and broadening participation in STEM. She co-leads EDC's organizational equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts and led the development of EDC's equity principles.
Sarita holds an MBA from Bentley University and a BS in Computer Science from Northeastern University.