As a Senior Researcher at WestEd, BethAnn Berliner focuses on strengthening school and community-based efforts for student success. Since joining WestEd in 1991, her work has contributed to the academic, health, and developmental growth of students, youth, and adults in several high-needs communities and reforming schools.

Berliner's recent work addresses the link between secondary reform and creating pathways for all students to achieve postsecondary educational or vocational options. She works with schools, state departments, universities, social service agencies, and the foundation community to seek better ways to close the achievement gap and increase graduation rates, recover dropouts, and strengthen alternative pathways to meet college eligibility requirements.

As the Director of WestEd's School-Community Laboratory, her work resulted in numerous community supports for some of the San Francisco Bay Area's most high-need residents. Such supports included enriched after-school options, community centers, school-based social services, tutoring and mentoring programs, and gang prevention and intervention efforts.

Though Berliner seeks success for all family members, most of her work focuses on the positive development of children and youth. An example of this is her work with homeless students. The culmination of years of research, Imagine the Possibilities is a guidebook that helps schools and districts care for and assist our nation's over one million homeless students. Since its publication in 2001, the book has been widely used in state departments, districts, and schools across the nation.

Prior to joining WestEd, Berliner directed a number of community-based education programs for assault victims, youth offenders, hearing and visually impaired youth, and battered women and their children. As a research historian and archivist, she produced studies of 19th and 20th century school reform processes.

She is a board member at a nonprofit organization that provides wraparound supports for emancipated foster youth in Alameda County, CA.

Berliner received an MA in social history from the University of Colorado and an MPA in evaluation and policy analysis from San Francisco State University.