Diane Friedlaender, PhD

Diane Friedlaender is an educator, researcher, and learning experience designer. Her work is rooted in more than two decades of scholarship and practice exploring how meaning, connection, and belonging help all people flourish. At Stanford Living Education (SLED), she taught more than 25 courses on purpose, resilience, and community building, and as a Senior Researcher at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), she documented the conditions under which students — especially those historically marginalized — discover their strengths and thrive.

Her commitment to access and equity in education runs through everything she does, from arts integration in public schools to community spaces where gratitude and purpose become lived practices, not abstract ideals. She holds a BA in Anthropology from UCSD and a PhD in Education Policy from UCLA.