Virginia Wise Berninger, PhD, is a professor of learning sciences and human development at the University of Washington, Seattle. She brings an interdisciplinary background to writing the interdisciplinary frameworks, which includes being a general education teacher (5 years in urban and suburban schools), special education teacher (3 years in a rural school), reading specialist (1 year in an urban school), experimental psychologist (cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics), clinical psychologist on interdisciplinary teams (predoctoral and postdoctoral clinical training at Boston Children's Hospital and licensed psychologist in Washington), school consultant (33 years in Boston and Seattle), research psychologist (Harvard Medical School, Tufts–New England Medical Center, University of Washington), trainer of school psychologists (1989–2006), and trainer of educators in K–12 and academics (2007–present).
 
Her research experience includes serving as a principal investigator on research funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development on normal and disabled reading, writing, and oral language development (1989–2008), as well as principal investigator and director of the University of Washington Interdisciplinary Research Center (genetics, assessments, brain imaging, and instruction; 1995–2006, 2001–present).