Suzanne Bouffard

Suzanne M. Bouffard is a researcher and writer with a PhD in psychology and a passion for making research useful and accessible. Her book, The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children (Avery, 2017), has been reviewed by national media including NPR and the New York Times. Her first book for Harvard Education Press, Ready, Willing, and Able: A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success, coauthored with Mandy Savitz Romer, has been widely used by practitioners and policymakers around the country. She is currently the vice president of publications at Learning Forward and editor of The Learning Professional magazine. Prior to that, she spent ten years at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where her research and writing focused on social and emotional learning (SEL), early childhood education, and family and community engagement in learning. She helped develop an SEL program called SECURe and helped launch the Making Caring Common initiative. Previously, with the Harvard Family Research Project, she led training and professional development for educators and conducted strategy development and program evaluation for nonprofits. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, U.S. News and World Report, and other national outlets, as well as education publications including Harvard Education Letter, Educational Leadership, Social Policy Report, and Kappan.