Dena Simmons

Dr. Dena Simmons is a lifelong learner, truth-teller, and abolitionist from the Bronx, New York. She is the founder and executive director of LiberatED, an organization that centers radical love, healing, and justice in education and social and emotional learning to support the mental health and well-being of students and educators so that all children can live, learn, and thrive in the comfort of their own skin. She is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Racial Justice at Loyola University of Chicago. She is the former Assistant Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society. Prior to her work at Yale, Dena served as a middle school educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer. She has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about SEL, social and racial justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings, including the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, two TEDx talks, a TED talk on Broadway, and Oprah’s OWN series, Speak Sis. Dr. Simmons has been profiled in Education Week, Edutopia, Learning for Justice, the Huffington Post, NPR, the AOL/PBS project, MAKERS: Women Who Make America, and a Beacon Press Book, Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. Dr. Simmons’ research interests include SEL and its intersection with culturally responsive pedagogy, healing, and justice with the hope of understanding how to foster belonging and collective liberation in K-12 school settings.