Jovi R. S. Nazareno

Outreach specialist, MIT Open Learning

Jovi R. S. Nazareno graduated from the Mind, Brain, and Education master’s program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her fascination with the brain grew from the course “The Neuroscience of Learning” at Harvard Extension School, which she took as a student and for which she later served as a teaching assistant for multiple years. Her curiosity about the brain and writing has its roots, though, in her undergraduate work and professional experience. She earned her B.A. in English and psychology at Hawaii Pacific University and then worked a decade as a writer and lead editor at an engi-neering firm. In her professional work, she developed writing toolkits and templates, conducted research of historical documents, and produced reports on environmental investigations. Additionally, she worked with K–12 students in tutoring centers for writing and math, taught computer skills to adults, and tutored college students in writing. It is because of all these ex-periences that she focuses on a transdisciplinary approach to studying what best supports learning to write, a skill that helps people to learn, to think, and to progress in formal academia and employment. Her other research interests include how to teach about the brain and how to share evidence from the learning sciences—bridging research with practice. She currently works at MIT Open Learning as a learning science and education outreach specialist.