Ulcca Joshi Hansen is an educator, author, mother, and advocate whose career has been shaped by a single question: what is education actually for? The child of immigrants who began school as an English-language learner, Ulcca spent her formative years in Tanzania, France, Russia, Germany, India, and the United States—navigating systems that answered that question differently. Those experiences fuel her commitment to surfacing the hidden assumptions that shape how we define achievement in America.
Ulcca began her career as an elementary school teacher in Newark Public Schools before serving as a program fellow at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. As vice president of the Public Education and Business Coalition, she expanded the Colorado Teacher Residency to become the first residency-based program serving both urban and rural districts. As vice president at Education Reimagined and chief program officer at Grantmakers for Education, she built partnerships between schools, districts, nonprofits, and higher education institutions to expand access to relationship-based, real-world learning. Ulcca currently serves on the board of ISTE+ASCD.
At a moment when institutions across sectors are struggling to hold, Ulcca increasingly applies the lens she honed in education—interrogating foundational assumptions, naming what systems were actually built to do—to broader audiences navigating change. A two-time TEDx speaker, Ulcca has spoken at COP26, IB Global, and SxSW Education. Her award-winning book, The Future of Smart, traces the roots of America's dominant approach to education and proposes a path forward. Ulcca holds a BA from Drew University, a PhD in neuroscience and human development from Oxford University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She is a Truman, Marshall, and Soros Fellow. Ulcca lives in Durango, Colorado with her husband, Chris, while long-distance parenting sons Sachin, a freshman at the University of Arizona, and Ashwin, finishing high school in Denver.