AnnMarie Baines

AnnMarie Baines, Ph.D. is the executive director of The Practice Space, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building confidence and community voice for people of all ages through communication skill development. She has over 20 years of experience coaching public speaking in high schools, universities, and community-based settings to promote self-advocacy skills and elevate underrepresented voices. Her methods focus on designing inclusive and engaging experiences that develop voice, agency, and empathy through strong facilitation and supportive relationships. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Baines studies inclusive education, equitable learning environments, and youth identity development, and conducted an ethnography of high school students labeled with learning disabilities and autism. As a former program officer for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Dr. Baines managed project-based learning research partnerships and leveraged her expertise in social and emotional learning to inform curriculum design and professional development programming. 

In her prior work, Dr. Baines worked with pre-service teachers as an Assistant Professor of Secondary Education at San Francisco State University and taught high school special education in the Boston Public Schools. She received her PhD in the Learning Sciences from University of Washington, Master’s in Education Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaching credential from the Boston Teacher Residency, and undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley. In addition to her work at The Practice Space, Dr. Baines currently teaches public speaking at UC Berkeley as a lecturer in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and is a member of the West Contra Costa Public Education Fund Board of Directors and San Francisco Symphony Chorus.