Gita Steiner-Khamsi (Teachers College, Columbia University) began teaching in 1985 and also served as the program coordinator for Comparative and International Education & International Educational Development programs. Working with her colleagues, she encouraged and facilitated a stronger involvement of Teachers College students and faculty in regional and national CIES meetings. Besides hosting one of the regional CIES meetings, she advises several doctoral students in the establishment and management of the on-line journal Current Issues in Comparative Education.

Steiner-Khamsi's most recent publications examines a methodological discussion on case study methodology in comparative studies and a substantive examination of citizenship education in different countries. Another publication investigates from a critical perspective one of the longest standing research topics in comparative and international education: the transfer of education reforms from one cultural context to another. For the past five years, she has been actively involved in teacher education reform in Mongolia, and analyzed how educational reforms had been imported to post-socialist Mongolia from elsewhere, and were subsequently locally adapted or Mongolized in the new context.
Gita affirms that along with her colleagues and with students from the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, she has benefited tremendously from CIES conferences. Gita feels that she wants to give something back to CIES, and will work to make comparative education more visible within all educational fields as well as with international cooperation communities.