Dr. Valerie B. Shapiro is a translational scientist who studies system-level strategies to overcome the persistent gap between rigorous research and the routines of educational practice as it relates to the promotion of mental, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing of young children. She conducts community-engaged scholarship that promotes the generation and use of evidence to improve thriving in schools. She will present key insights from her research studying how community coalitions successfully organize for effective prevention practice. She will then illustrate how those insights inform her current work co-constructing and studying state-level infrastructure to advance systemic and equity-oriented Social and Emotional Learning in California schools.
Dr. Valerie B. Shapiro is a member of the tenured faculty at UC Berkeley. She is a translation scientist who studies system-level strategies to overcome the persistent gap between rigorous research and the routines of educational practice as it relates to the promotion of mental, emotional, and behavioral wellbeing of young children.
Her community-engaged scholarship seeks to understand how to build systems to promote the generation and use of evidence to improve thriving in schools. Specifically, Dr. Shapiro is a recognized thought leader in the field of Social and Emotional Learning, particularly in the areas of assessment, implementation, knowledge mobilization, and infrastructure for continuous improvement. She contributes her expertise to organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNESCO.
In California, Dr. Shapiro serves as the Scientific Director and Special Project Advisor to CalHOPE Student Support – a Department of Health Care Services funded collaboration to advance Social and Emotional Learning statewide. For this work, she was recognized with the 2024 Chancellor’s Award for Campus Community Partnerships at UC Berkeley, and also honored by the Society for Prevention Research with their 2024 Public Service Award for putting lessons from research into practice.
Dr. Shapiro is a Fellow of the Society for Social Work Research, the National Chair of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavior Health, a Scientific Expert to the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, and a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar.
