Paula Malesardi Hansen’s work resides at the interstice of art and education as catalysts for social change. 

Paula was born and raised in New York. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. Paula’s art and design work has been featured in exhibitions and events in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, Southern Exposure, Pro Arts, and New Image Art. She translates and shares her experience as a visual artist and designer into her work in education. Paula collaborates with schools and community-based organizations to envision, design, and lead creative experiences that support learning in visual, tactile, and experiential ways. 

Paula has completed her Master of Arts in Education with the Developmental Teacher Education Program at University of California, Berkeley, where her research investigated how classroom ecology and maker activities foster socio-emotional development and agency within diverse classroom communities. She is certified as an Integrated Learning Specialist with the Alameda County Office of Education, where she learned to create inventive, arts-integrated lessons using frameworks from Project Zero, an educational research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Paula currently lives and works in the Bay Area, where one of her 5-year-old students thinks that “art is the culture of good things”, and she agrees.