Lindsay Portnoy PhD
Cognitive Scientist. Educator. Author. Mom.
I’ve dedicated my career to learning how people learn. I’ve worked with teachers, parents, students, administrators, entrepreneurs, executives, and community members, and I’ve found that our education system isn’t failing—it’s changing. Technology is altering all our landscapes, including the classroom.
Roll up your sleeves. It’s about to get wonderfully messy and we get the privilege and honor of being the changemakers of the change we want to see in education—the change that our kids deserve.
The magic wand that will “fix” education isn’t magic at all. It’s in our hands and in our children’s hands, and it has been all along.
As a parent, I want to give my children all the skills, wills, and attributes to succeed. As an educator, I want all kids to be self-motivated and passionate about learning. And as a woman in the 2020’s, I know that the innovations of today hold the key to unlock these gifts for our children tomorrow.
I believe we are all designed to learn, which is why I wrote two books filled with translational research to empower learning in classrooms and living rooms beginning today:
Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom, about the flexible and intentional elements of design thinking that spark engagement with the world around us, and
Game On? Brain On!, about the palpable power of play for leveling up learning in every space.
I believe the magic wand we’ve been searching for is in each of our hands. It is written into our DNA. It is in the way we learn through the deliberate exploration of the world around us. In a word: play.
My mission is to take research out of the ivory tower and place it into the hands of every citizen so together we can stop kicking the proverbial can of status quo education down the road.
This is the foundation for my writing in The Washington Post, USA Today, The World Economic Forum, and elsewhere. Together with a friend I’ve created a video explainer series about some of the scientific studies that revealed human behavior called Escaped the Ivory Tower.
I have served as a professor in Northeastern University’s Doctor of Education program within the Graduate School of Education at the intersection of design thinking, cognitive science, and innovation to enhance cognition and create a more equitable and authentic system of education and have been an elected trustee and former President of my local Board of Education as well as co-founder of an immersive educational games company.
Most importantly, I’m the mom to two teen boys and five rescue fur babies (3 cats and 2 dogs) along with whatever creatures come tumbling out of the woods.
I believe it’s time to level up the way we teach and learn; one household and one classroom at a time. I hope you will join me, I know our kids are already game. All we’re missing is you!