Speaker biographies
Larry Berger is CEO and cofounder of Wireless Generation, an education company with offices in New York, Atlanta, and Dallas that pioneered the adaptation of mobile technologies for use in managing and improving teaching and learning in pre-kindergarten to sixth grades. Mr. Berger led the invention of Wireless Generation’s mCLASS system, which enables educators to administer early reading and math formative assessments using handheld computers, then immediately receive easy-to-understand Web-based reports that help educators use data to make decisions about instruction. Prior to launching Wireless Generation, Mr. Berger was the president of InterDimensions, a Web solutions company based in New York and Boston.
Morgan Brown was appointed assistant deputy secretary of education for innovation and improvement by Secretary Margaret Spellings in July 2006. In this post, he leads the Education Department’s efforts to support innovations in education and make strategic investments in promising education practices, especially implementing the public school choice and supplemental educational services provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. He also oversees twenty-eight grant programs related to education improvement, school choice, teacher quality, technology, and arts in education. Prior to joining the department, Mr. Brown worked for three years as the director of the Division of School Choice and Innovation at the Minnesota Department of Education.
Anthony S. “Tony” Bryk holds the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. In his former position as the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago, he was founding director of the Center for Urban School Improvement and launched the university’s professional development charter school in the North Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood of Chicago. Mr. Bryk is also the founding director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, a federation of Chicago-area research organizations. In 2003, he was awarded the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Scholarship and the Distinguished Career Contributions Award from the American Educational Research Association.
Matt Candler is CEO of New Schools for New Orleans. He has taught and coached at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, and he helped build the main operations center for the 1996 Olympics in his hometown of Atlanta. He founded a consulting practice specializing in start-up support for new charter founders and cofounded a charter school in North Carolina. He then joined the KIPP Foundation in 2001 as vice president of school development, where his team established thirty-seven new schools. Mr. Candler served as the founding COO of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, which provides support to charter schools in New York.
Chester E. “Checker” Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and has been at the forefront of the national education debate for twenty-five years. During his career, Mr. Finn has served as a professor of education policy at Vanderbilt University, counsel to the U.S. Ambassador to India, a legislative director in the office of former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and as an assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. He serves on the board of numerous organizations concerned with primary and secondary schooling and has authored fourteen books and over 350 articles. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review, and the Boston Globe.
Christopher Gergen is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures and cofounder and chairman of Smarthinking, the country’s leading online tutoring provider. His other entrepreneurial ventures include starting a coffeehouse and bar dedicated to promoting the arts and music in Santiago, Chile, and helping to launch Entrepreneur Corps, a national service initiative sponsored by AmeriCorps*VISTA. Mr. Gergen is on the founding board of E. L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, DC, and is founder and former director of Lead!, a nonprofit leadership and entrepreneurship program for local high school students. He served as vice president of new market development for K12 Inc., where he led efforts to introduce K12’s multimedia curriculum and online learning platform into public schools. Prior to joining K12, Mr. Gergen was the COO and vice president of business development and strategy for New American Schools.
David Harris serves as the Mind Trust’s president and CEO, which he designed and launched while working closely with Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson. Previously, he served as Mayor Peterson’s charter schools director, in which capacity he built one of the nation’s most highly regarded charter school offices. As charter schools director, Mr. Harris created from scratch a full-scale chartering operation, including a rigorous application process for new charter schools, a comprehensive accountability system to monitor charter schools’ results and report them widely to parents and the public, and a vigorous outreach effort to induce capable people and organizations to start charter schools in Indianapolis. Prior to working with the mayor, Mr. Harris practiced law with the Indianapolis firm of Baker & Daniels.
Bryan C. Hassel is codirector of Public Impact. He consults nationally on charter schools and many aspects of public school reform, including district restructuring, comprehensive school reform, and teaching quality. President George W. Bush appointed him to serve on the national Commission on Excellence in Special Education, which produced its report in July 2002. In addition to numerous articles, monographs, and how-to guides for practitioners, Mr. Hassel is coauthor of Picky Parent Guide: Choose Your Child’s School with Confidence (Armchair Press, 2004), author of The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Brookings Institution Press, 1999), and coeditor of Learning from School Choice (Brookings Institution Press, 1998).
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI. His many books include No Remedy Left Behind (coedited with Chester E. Finn Jr.; AEI Press, 2007), No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang, 2006), Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2006), and Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). His publications have appeared in numerous outlets including Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Next, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Mr. Hess currently serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and as a member of the research advisory board for the National Center on Educational Accountability. He is a former high school social studies teacher and former professor of education and government at the University of Virginia.
Joe Keeney is the founder and CEO of 4th Sector Solutions Inc., a consulting firm that provides organizational capacity building and business process management services to public and private educational organizations. Mr. Keeney has over fifteen years of education industry and consulting experience. From 1997-2005 he was with Edison Schools Inc., where he was president of Edison Charter Schools and had responsibility for charter school operations, client development, finance, and real estate. He had previously been a divisional president and chief operating officer of a Fortune 1000 global manufacturer, and a corporate strategy consultant at LEK Consulting Inc.
Ed Kirby manages the Walton Family Foundation's work in the school choice movement. He has served variously as a staffer, consultant, and trustee to a number of supply-side education reform initiatives, particularly in the charter school sector. Ed served on, and then directed, the public sector team that launched and managed the Massachusetts charter school initiative during its start-up years. He began his career as a high school English teacher.
Wendy Kopp is CEO and founder of Teach For America, a national corps that works to put a dent in the lingering problem of educational inequality. Today, 4,400 corps members reach approximately 375,000 disadvantaged students across the country. They join more than 10,000 Teach For America alumni who are assuming significant leadership roles in education and social reform. Ms. Kopp is the author of One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (PublicAffairs, 2003).
Stig Leschly is managing partner and founder of SRL Capital, a buyout fund organized in 2005 to acquire undervalued businesses. From 2000 to 2004, he was a lecturer at Harvard Business School, where his research and teaching focused on entrepreneurship and education reform. There, he developed the school’s first course on education reform and taught entrepreneurship in various MBA and executive education programs. Mr. Leschly was previously CEO and founder of Exchange.com, an early competitor to eBay. Amazon.com acquired Exchange.com in 1999. After the acquisition, he worked at Amazon.com in various operating and strategic planning roles. He was formerly an assistant principal in a K–8 Catholic school in Harlem and a consultant at McKinsey & Co. In 2005, Mr. Leschly was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of 250 outstanding Young Global Leaders under age forty.
Daniel Pianko is a principal of Knowledge Investment Partners, and he serves as the lead research analyst for the KIP Presidium Fund. He has extensive experience in investment management and education, and he spent the last six years advising, operating, and investing in education businesses, most recently as an associate at Ameriquest Capital Group. He began his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and entered the education industry as director of strategy and planning at LearnNow, a for-profit charter management company later acquired by Edison Schools. Mr. Pianko then joined Edison, where he played a key role in the largest privatization of American public schools in Philadelphia.
Michelle Rhee is chancellor of the District of Columbia Public School System. She was most recently CEO and president of The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a nonprofit organization that partners with school districts, state departments of education, and other educational entities to enhance their capacities to recruit, select, train, and support outstanding new teachers for difficult-to-staff schools. Since Ms. Rhee founded TNTP in 1997, it has launched more than forty programs in twenty states and attracted and prepared over 10,000 new, high-quality teachers. Under her leadership, TNTP grew into a national organization that has worked to recruit more than 23,000 new teachers for public schools across the country.
Sharon P. Robinson was selected as the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s top executive in 2005, and she assumed leadership of the association in April of that year. A lifelong civil rights activist, Ms. Robinson has emphasized the importance of educating and maximizing the potential of minority and disabled students. She was formerly president of the Educational Policy Leadership Institute of the Educational Testing Service (ETS). Before joining ETS, Ms. Robinson was assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. She also held a variety of leadership positions at the National Education Association (NEA), including director of the National Center for Innovation, the NEA’s research and development arm.
Larry Rosenstock is principal and CEO of High Tech High, a charter school management organization in San Diego. He previously taught carpentry for eleven years in urban high schools in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also served as a staff attorney at the Harvard Center for Law and Education and was a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for five years. Before founding High Tech High, Mr. Rosentock was principal of the Rindge School of Technical Arts and of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and he directed the federal New Urban High School Project and was president of the Price Charitable Fund. Mr. Rosentock’s program “CityWorks” won the Ford Foundation Innovations in State and Local Government Award in 1992.
Elliot Sainer was CEO and cofounder of Aspen Education Group until its sale in November 2006 to CRC Health Group. He has remained at CRC as president of the Aspen Division and as vice chairman of the parent company’s board of directors. While at Aspen, Mr. Sainer expanded the company from its inception with one residential program to its current thirty-eight locations in thirteen states and the United Kingdom, with students from all fifty states and thirty-two foreign countries.
Jon Schnur is CEO and cofounder of New Leaders for New Schools. He works with the New Leaders for New Schools team and community to pursue high levels of learning and achievement for every child by attracting, preparing, and supporting the next generation of outstanding principals for urban schools. Mr. Schnur founded New Leaders for New Schools in 2000 and has led the organization since then. Previously, he served as special assistant to secretary of education Richard Riley, as associate director for educational policy in the Clinton White House, and as senior adviser on education to former vice president Al Gore.
Don Shalvey is CEO and cofounder of Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school organization founded to enrich students’ lives and reshape public school systems by building a system of high performing charter schools across California. Mr. Shalvey has forty years of experience in public education and is widely recognized as a leader in public school reform and the charter school movement. Prior to establishing Aspire Public Schools, he was the superintendent of San Carlos School District, where he sponsored the first charter school in California in 1992. In 1998, Mr. Shalvey and entrepreneur Reed Hastings cofounded Californians for Public School Excellence, a grassroots organization that led to the passage of the Charter Schools Act of 1998, which lifted the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.
Jim Shelton is a program director in the Education initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He previously was a partner and the east coast lead for the NewSchools Venture Fund, where he worked closely with the chancellor of New York City Public Schools to craft Children First, a comprehensive reform strategy. Before joining NewSchools, Mr. Shelton cofounded LearnNow, a school management company that later merged with Edison Schools. He also spent four years as a senior management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Upon leaving McKinsey, he joined Knowledge Universe, Inc., where he developed and acquired several education-related businesses.
Kim Smith cofounded NewSchools Venture Fund in 1998 to transform public education by supporting educational entrepreneurs. She served as CEO of NewSchools from 1998 to 2005, and she currently serves as senior advisor and as a board member. Ms. Smith was a founding team member of Teach For America in 1989 and went on to become founding director of BAYAC AmeriCorps, a consortium of nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay area. Her background includes marketing experience with Silicon Graphics’ Education Industry Group, where she focused on the online learning industry, and experience as the founding director of a trade show venture. In 2001, Ms. Smith was featured in Newsweek’s report on “Women of the 21st Century” as “the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century.”
Laura Smith is director of the Market Maker for the New York City Department of Education. In that role, she is catalyzing a marketplace for internal services and developing online tools to help schools make informed purchasing decisions. Most recently, Ms. Smith launched the internal services market for Empowerment Schools and subsequently rolled out a marketplace for bundled support packages to the department’s more than 1,400 schools. Before joining the department, she developed back-office solutions for charter schools at the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence. She began her work in urban education as a staff action officer for the San Diego City Schools, focusing on high school reform. Previously, she managed software and professional development implementations for Scientific Learning Corporation’s K–12 clients.
Nelson Smith became president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in December 2004. The Alliance is a national nonprofit organization representing all sectors of the public charter school movement. As president, Mr. Smith leads the Alliance’s efforts to promote growth and quality in charter schooling. Previously, he served as vice president for policy and governance at New American Schools, as the first executive director of the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, and as vice president for education and workforce development at the New York City Partnership. From 1985 to 1992, at the U.S. Department of Education, he oversaw numerous programs devoted to improving education through research-based methods.
David Stevenson is vice president of business development and government affairs for Wireless Generation. In that role, he is responsible for government policy, advocacy, and outreach activities for the company. Mr. Stevenson previously managed the product development group at Wireless Generation, where he led the software teams that developed the TPRI, Tejas LEE, and CIRLE assessment products. He has developed partnerships with the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, and major publishers, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Harcourt. Prior to joining Wireless Generation, Mr. Stevenson was a producer and product manager at Scholastic, where he developed online planning and communication tools for teachers and led a multimillion-dollar e-commerce development project.
Gregg Vanourek is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures. Previously, he ran Vanourek Consulting Solutions, LLC, a Colorado-based company specializing in strategic planning, organizational alignment, and market research. He has also served as senior vice president of school development for K12 Inc. and vice president for programs of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where he launched a private scholarship program for underserved youth in Dayton, Ohio. Previously, Mr. Vanourek was a research fellow at the Hudson Institute. He has written a book on charter schools, Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (with Chester E. Finn Jr. and Bruno V. Manno; Princeton University Press, 2001), several research reports and book chapters, and dozens of articles.
Chris Whittle is founder and chairman of Edison Schools, America’s leading public school partner. An entrepreneur with more than thirty-five years of leadership experience in the fields of education and publishing, Mr. Whittle conceived and founded Edison Schools in 1992. Edison Schools partners with school districts, charter boards, and states to raise student achievement and educational outcomes through its research-based school design and curriculum, achievement management solutions, professional development, and extended learning programs. Mr. Whittle is also the author of Crash Course: Imagining a Better Future For Public Education (Riverhead, 2005). Prior to founding Edison, he was founder and chairman of Whittle Communications, one of America’s largest student publishers.
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