AnnaLise Hoopes (she/her)

AnnaLise Hoopes is a Fulbright Scholar, Bedari Kindness Institute Fellow, and PhD candidate in Comparative International Education at UCLA. Her dissertation explores how PreK-5 schools in the US, Finland, Italy, Germany, Ecuador, and Sweden foster empathy. AnnaLise uses a Positive Deviance approach—centering the stories, insights, and wisdom of teachers who prioritize empathy pedagogy in their classrooms. Her dataset includes a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse group of teachers and schools, including Indigenous communities in Ecuador (Kichwa) and Northern Sweden (Sámi).

AnnaLise’s research is focused on the cultivation of empathy across lines of division—on dimensions of race, class, gender, ability, appearance, religion, political ideology, and even species (ecological empathy). Current research projects include interventions to promote online empathy and digital citizenship in primary schools through a grant from the Bedari Kindness Institute, and interventions to reduce ethnocentrism and promote positive attitudes towards immigrants through a grant from Besample. In a mixed-methods study, AnnaLise explores the roots of climate activism through interviews with 27 young activists from Angola, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Eswatini, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.

AnnaLise holds a Bachelor’s in Philosophy and Studio Art from the University of Notre Dame, a Master’s in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a California teaching credential. She has been a classroom teacher, environmental educator, nonprofit director, and social entrepreneur. In 2017, AnnaLise founded The Changemaker Project (TCP), a 501(c)(3) civic education nonprofit. For nearly a decade, TCP has empowered thousands of youth in 40 countries with the tools, mentorship, and funding to launch social impact projects in their communities. Through this advocacy work, AnnaLise hopes to mobilize a generation of active, civically-engaged global citizens—capable of designing innovative solutions to real-world problems.