Dr. Carol Hedgspeth

Founder and Lead Coach, The Brilliance Lab

Dr. Carol Hedgspeth is the Founder and Lead Coach of The Brilliance Lab, her leadership coaching and consulting practice. Her mission is to develop bold, brilliant, people-first leaders—especially women of color—through one-to-one and team coaching, strategic leadership development sessions, and meeting facilitation. She launched The Brilliance Lab in October, 2025.

Prior to Founding The Brilliance Lab, Carol served as Deputy Director at EdTrust-West, an educational justice nonprofit dedicated to closing opportunity gaps. From October 2021 through October 2025, she led and supported teams using an equity-driven, data-centered, and student-focused approach to advocate for equitable education and high academic achievement for all California students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities..

From 2015–2021, Carol worked at Innovate Public Schools ascending to Vice President of Talent and Operations, where she strengthened the organization’s talent recruitment and management strategies. She is especially proud of her work improving diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and managing day-to-day operations that helped increase organizational effectiveness and support staff success.

Earlier in her career, Carol was a researcher at WestEd in the Assessment and Standards Development Services program, managing research projects on topics including the alignment of state assessments to state-and district-level standards and learning objectives, the validity and defensibility of state-level educator effectiveness measures, the adequacy of college- and career-readiness measures in career academies, and metrics for optimal teaching and learning strategies for English learners, multilingual families, and families with low incomes.

Her career began in higher education, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Psychology and Education as an adjunct professor across the East Coast in 1995. Most recently, she served as Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Carol received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and an M.S. in Social Psychology from Howard University in Washington D.C, and received a B.S. in Psychology from University of California, Berkeley.