Meg Riordan

Chief Learning Officer, The Possible Project

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the Chief Learning Officer at The Possible Project (TPP), an afterschool program that partners with youth to develop entrepreneurial mindsets and skills, career readiness, and propel students towards post-secondary opportunities and economic mobility. 

Prior to joining TPP, she was the Director of External Research at EL Education, where she led a federally-funded Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to study the impact of ELs high quality curriculum and coaching supports on students’ achievement and teachers’ practice. She previously served as the Regional Director at NYC Outward Bound Schools, supporting a network of 12 EL Education middle and high schools by collaborating with school leaders on strategic planning, creating and facilitating professional learning, and leading a team of school coaches. 

Meg’s publications include Going to Scale with New School Designs: Reinventing High School (Teachers College Press, 2009) as well as numerous journal articles in the Journal of Experiential Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, and Equity and Excellence in Education, among others; and blog posts (The Huffington Post, Quiet Revolution, EdWeek, and Edutopia). Meg’s research centers on teacher professional learning and students’ learning experiences, deeper learning and equity, scaling up educational models, continuous improvement, and experiential education.

Meg earned her B.A. in Education from Marquette University, her M.A. in Writing from DePaul University, and her Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning from New York University. Meg taught middle and high school English in Milwaukee and Chicago and English as a Second Language at DePaul University and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan. She was in the inaugural cohort of the Deeper Learning Equity Fellows and serves on the Advisory Board of the University of Pennsylvania’s Project-Based Learning Teacher Certificate Program.

In her free time, Meg practices aerial arts (fabric and trapeze), runs ultra-marathons, and is learning to play the ukulele.