She served previously as the Deputy Director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy and the Director of the Education Program at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture a the University of Virginia. Dr. Berner has published articles and book chapters on the relationship between educational structure and state funding in democratic nations, religious education and citizenship formation, and teacher preparation in different national contexts. Palgrave MacMillan also published her book, Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School in 2017.

She consults regularly on projects that examine the academic and civic outcomes of different school sectors. Her teaching experience took place in a Jewish pre-school, an Episcopal secondary school, and an open university in Louisiana. She serves as a gubernatorial appointee to the Maryland Education Development Consortium and she holds degrees from Davidson College (Honors A.B.) and from Oxford University (M.Litt. and D.Phil. in Modern History).