About Dr. Vajra Watson

Vajra M. Watson is a full tenured Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and currently serves as the Senior Associate Vice President of the Sacramento State Placer Satellite Campus. Prior to this role, she was the Faculty Director of the doctoral program at Sac State and spent 12 years at UC Davis as the Director of the Office of Research and Policy for Equity. She is the founder of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), an award-winning literary arts organization that pairs community-based poet-mentor educators and teachers together to develop curriculum that reclaims and reimagines schooling.

Dr. Watson is the author and editor of four books: Learning to Liberate (Routledge, 2012), Transformative Schooling (Routledge, 2018), The Soul of Learning (Routledge, 2022), and Faith Made Flesh (Cornell University Press, 2023), as well as dozens of journal articles and book chapters. She is the recipient of Sacramento’s 40 Under 40 Leadership Award, the California Educational Research Association’s Best in Research Award, the Congressional Woman of the Year Award, the NBA Sacramento King’s Woman of Inspiration Award, and the American Educational Research Association’s Social Impact Award as well as AERA’s Social Justice Leadership Award.

Watson is a steadfast solutionary who works at the intersections of theory and practice, policies and pedagogies. She is active in the community and is honored to serve on a number of Board of Directors, including United Playaz in San Francisco (Board President), the National Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, The People’s Think Tank for Educational Justice, Kingmakers of Oakland (Board Co-Chair), and Elite Public Schools. 

Dr. Watson obtained her B.A. from UC Berkeley and holds two Master’s Degrees from Harvard University in International Education and Teaching and Learning. In 2008, she received her Doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

Vajra is the very proud mother of two children; her daughter is a sophomore at Yale and her son recently graduated from UC Berkeley with Dual Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Business Administration. She loves to listen to music and enjoys game nights with family and friends (playing everything from dominoes to Uno).

Previous Experience

UC Davis Director of Research & Policy for Equity

2008–2020

Built university-wide center for educational equity. Without consistent base budget resources, Dr. Watson raised over $7 million dollars in research grants and extramural funding. This allowed her to hire staff, incubate innovations in the field, and replicate models across multiple systems. https://equity.ucdavis.edu

Founder of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS)

2008–Present

SAYS is a social justice movement to transform education. We engage elementary, middle, and high school students to become the authors of their own lives and agents of change. Since its inception in 2008, SAYS has worked with over 10,000 students and teachers in the Sacramento region. Students in SAYS have shown a 48% increase in attendance and a 17% decrease in suspensions, expulsions, and detentions. 81% of participants will be the first in their families to attend college and 12% will be the first in their families to graduate from high school. Notwithstanding these generational barriers, the longitudinal data is promising: 90% of SAYS students who make it into college are graduating in five years or less. https://www.says.ucdavis.edu

Education

Ed.D.
Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
Doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy with a focus on Communities and Schools

Ed.M.
Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
Master’s Degree in Learning and Teaching

Ed.M.
Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
Master’s Degree in International Education

B.A.
University of California, Berkeley | College of Letters and Science
Political Science/International Relations and Education —Dean's Honor List, Summa cum laude