Kerry McDonald is a Senior Fellow at FEE, where she leads the Education Entrepreneurship Lab and hosts the LiberatED podcast. She is also the Velinda Jonson Family Education Fellow at State Policy Network, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a regular contributor at Forbes.com and The 74. Kerry is the bestselling author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), and the author of the forthcoming book, Joyful Learning: How To Find Freedom, Happiness, and Success Beyond Conventional Schooling (Hachette/PublicAffairs, 2025).

Kerry's research interests include homeschooling and schooling alternatives, self-directed learning, education entrepreneurship, parent empowerment, school choice, and family and child policy. Her articles have appeared at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Newsweek, NPR, Education Next, Reason Magazine, Washington Examiner, City Journal, Entrepreneur, and the Journal of School Choice, among others. She has a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bowdoin College.

Kerry lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children.

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