Shelley Pasnik, EDC Senior Vice President for External Affairs, is a national expert in the thoughtful integration of digital media to promote school readiness, school success, and workforce readiness. Shelley leads Growth + Partnerships for EDC, oversees EDC’s Communications team, and is a member of the Senior Leadership team.  A long-time leader of EDC’s Center for Children & Technology, she has conducted policy-influencing studies, launched and led innovative educational R&D, and cultivated high-profile public-private partnerships in the U.S. and globally. These include collaborations with the American Museum of Natural History, Apple, Bank Street College of Education, Boston Children’s Museum, Carnegie Hall, Cisco Education, Exploratorium, Fred Rogers Productions, GBH, Google, IBM, Intel Corporation, MIT Media Lab, National Geographic, NYSCI, PBS, Sesame Workshop, WNET, and many others.

In close collaboration with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, Shelley led the research program for Ready To Learn, the U.S. Department of Education’s signature investment in educational media. She is the editor of the book Getting Ready to Learn: Creating Effective, Educational Children’s Media (Routledge), and has published findings on the positive impacts of children’s media in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Children and Media, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

Shelley is the author of a recent op-ed “Millions of Kids Learn Through Public Media. Why Take That Away?” published by The 74. She serves as an expert commentator for journalists on the topics of ed tech, children’s media, and education and has been quoted in The New York Times, BBC, Newsweek, The Washington Post and its “Impromptu” podcast, The Boston Globe, Financial Times, Wired, EdSurge, Axios, The Hill, the Christian Science Monitor, EdWeek, and the Wall Street Journal MarketWatch.

In 2019, Shelley co-authored Integrating Technology into Early Learning: Promising Practices and Checklist with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was widely distributed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. And earlier in her career she developed the first Guide to Children and Media for PBS Parents and authored Apple’s first iPod in Education report. She has served on advisory boards, including Apple ConnectEd, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and Global Action Project and is currently serving on the EDSAFE AI Alliance Steering Committee.

Shelley’s career began at the Center for Media Education, during which time, she testified before the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission on children’s media policy. She holds an MA from the University of Maryland, College Park.