Brenda Payne

Brenda Payne has been an innovator in the field of Invention Education for K-12 students for 30 years, providing training for educators, program leaders, and administrators throughout the state of California. 

Brenda began her career as an educator in Northern California where she introduced invention education to students, utilizing an engineering curriculum she helped develop for her district. Continuing on as a principal at several schools in Northern and Central California and a superintendent in a small district in Santa Cruz County, she began the California Invention Convention (CAIC), a program that serves thousands of students as an annual celebration of K-12 inventors and entrepreneurs across the state.

Brenda has provided the professional development for the CAIC curriculum teachers use in their classrooms and after school programs.  Since joining the Lemelson/MIT staff, she has worked with other education experts to develop training modules for  teachers throughout the country so they too can provide their students with the necessary creative and problem-solving skills to successfully engage in inventing solutions to self-identified problems in their own lives, that of their friends and families, and their communities.   

Education

Bachelors, English/Teaching Credential, University of California, Berkeley 

Masters of Administrative Education, Educational Leadership, University of San Francisco 

If you could invent anything, what would it be?

Brenda would invent a machine to dissolve negative energy