Vanessa Rodriguez taught humanities in the New York City public schools for more than ten years before deciding to return to graduate school in pursuit of understanding exactly what—beyond her love of children—inspires her love of teaching. She is now a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where her research has been recognized for its innovation and potential impact on education with the prestigious Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) award. She is the author, with Michelle Fitzpatrick, of The Teaching Brain: The Evolutionary Trait at the Heart of Education (The New Press). A New Yorker at heart, she currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.