Barbara Byrd-Bennett
Chair
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, executive-in-residence at Cleveland State University’s College of Education and Human Services, is the former chief executive officer of the Cleveland Municipal School District and an experienced educator, administrator and authority on urban education. She is also regional executive officer for New Leaders for New Schools in Washington, D.C. She began her education career in the New York City schools, where she served as an elementary, middle and high school teacher, school principal, and director of curriculum, instruction and professional development. She also has been an adjunct professor at Malcolm King College in Harlem, New York’s City College, the College of New Rochelle and Fordham University. Before coming to Cleveland in 1998, Byrd-Bennett served as supervising superintendent for New York City’s Chancellor’s District, and as superintendent for the Crown Heights district in Brooklyn.

Adam Urbanski
Executive Director
A former high school teacher and college professor, Adam Urbanski has been a national leader in education reform. He is currently an AFT vice president and the president of the Rochester (N.Y.) Teachers Association. Urbanski is also the founding director of the Teacher Union Reform Network, a coalition of progressive AFT and NEA locals. He was a trustee of the National Center for Education and the Economy, and a senior associate to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

 

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Linda Bridges
A former elementary special education teacher, Linda Bridges was a charter member of the Corpus Christi American Federation of Teachers and served as president for 24 years. While at CCAFT, Bridges helped pioneer exclusive consultations for school employees. Under her leadership, CCAFT developed several collaborative ventures with the Corpus Christi Independent School District in the area of school reform. From these efforts, the district and the union developed local academic standards and peer coaching for new teachers and teachers at risk. In 2005, Bridges became president of Texas AFT. She is also an AFT vice president.

Clayton M. Christensen
Clayton Christensen is a Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His specific areas of focus include developing organizational capabilities and finding new markets for new technologies. His most recent book is titled Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

Ernesto Cortes, Jr.
Ernesto Cortes Jr. is the Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in Chicago by the late Saul Alinsky. In 1974, Cortes founded the Communities Organized for Public Service, a well-known church-based, grass-roots organization in San Antonio. He went on to found community-based organizations in cities throughout Texas and the Southwest, to form the Southwest IAF Network. Cortes and the network launched an innovative public education initiative, called the Alliance School Initiative, to engage communities in school restructuring and reform, working closely with education unions. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work, including most recently the H. J. Heinz Award for Public Policy and an appointment as a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT in the department of urban studies and planning.

Chris Gabrieli
Chris Gabrieli is a senior partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a venture capital investment firm that helps innovative young businesses succeed. In 2000, he founded Massachusetts 2020, an organization with the mission to expand and improve learning opportunities for children across the state. He serves as chairman of Massachusetts 2020. He is also the chairman of the National Center on Time & Learning, an organization that is dedicated to expanding learning time to strengthen and improve student achievement. In 2002, he won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor and ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2006. Gabrieli’s book (with co-author Warren Goldstein), Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods was published in 2008.

Linda Darling Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. She also has served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity. From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. Most recently, she led the education transition team for President Obama.

Wade Henderson, Esq.
Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and counselor to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. The LCCR is the nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition. Henderson is also the Joseph L. Rauh Jr. Professor of Public Interest Law at the University of the District of Columbia law school. Henderson is well-known for his expertise on a wide range of civil rights, civil liberties and human rights issues. He also leads an effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation to revive the right of workers to organize unions.

Susan Moore Johnson
Susan Moore Johnson is a Carl H. Pforzheimer Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She studies and teaches about teacher policy, organizational change and administrative practice. A former high school teacher and administrator, she continues to be interested in research on the work of teachers and the reform of schools. She has studied the leadership of superintendents, the effects of collective bargaining on schools, the use of incentive pay plans for teachers, and the school as a context for adult work. Her current work is examining how best to recruit, support and retain a strong teaching force in the next decade.

Jerry Jordan
Jerry T. Jordan is president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and is an AFT vice president. As a leader of the PFT, Jordan has built effective coalitions with parents, education advocates and civic leaders to transform Philadelphia’s schools, improve graduation rates and expand educational opportunities for all of Philadelphia’s children.

Caroline Kennedy
Caroline Kennedy is the vice chair of the New York City Fund for Public Schools, a nonprofit organization that has enlisted record numbers of New Yorkers to volunteer in the city’s schools, and has raised more than $248 million to support critical education reforms including principal training, literacy and arts programs.

Between 2002 and 2004, Kennedy established the Office of Strategic Partnerships at the New York City Department of Education, serving as chief executive. In that capacity, she developed a new approach to public-private partnerships with the city’s schools. Under her leadership, the Office of Strategic Partnerships and the Fund for Public Schools have brought greater accountability to private dollars invested in public school reform, built awareness of the challenges facing educators, strengthened partnerships between the business and cultural community and the schools, and encouraged greater involvement of all New Yorkers in public education.

Kennedy is the author and editor of seven best-selling books on the Bill of Rights, the right to privacy, American history, politics and poetry. She is a co-chair of ServiceNation, and serves on the board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Kennedy also serves on the board of directors of New Visions for Public Schools, a New York City nonprofit organization dedicated to reform of the public schools through innovative work with educators, families, service organizations and civic leaders.

Merlene Martin
Merlene Martin is the president of the Oregon School Employees Association, representing more than 20,000 school support and other employees working in Oregon school districts, community colleges, education service districts, Head Start agencies, libraries, and park and recreation districts. Martin worked as a paraprofessional at Lincoln Middle School in Cottage Grove, Ore.; and has served in numerous elected positions for the OSEA at the local and state levels. She has been the OSEA president for the past seven years and was recently re-elected to another two-year term. Martin was the 2008 recipient of the AFT’s Albert Shanker PSRP Pioneer Award. She also was awarded life membership to both OSEA and the American Association of Classified School Employees.

Ted Mitchell
Ted Mitchell is the president and CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund. Prior to joining NewSchools, he was president of Occidental College in Los Angeles, dean and professor of education and information studies at UCLA, and professor of education at Dartmouth College. He currently serves as the president of the California State Board of Education. Mitchell also served as a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees from 1985 to 1990.

Maria Neira
Maria Neira, an elementary school bilingual teacher who rose through the ranks of union leadership to become a nationally recognized expert on educational issues, is vice president of New York State United Teachers, representing more than 600,000 members. Neira oversees the statewide union's initiatives involving educational policy matters. She is NYSUT’s front-line advocate to the board of regents and the New York State Education Department.

Neira, an AFT vice president, serves on numerous state and national boards, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She has received many awards for her advocacy and leadership. She is also a member of several professional organizations, including the National Staff Development Council, the National Science Teachers Association and the Puerto Rican Educators Association.

Warren Simmons
Warren Simmons is executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Before joining the Institute in 1998, Simmons was executive director of the Philadelphia Education Fund, where he supported districtwide efforts to enact standards-based reform. Simmons also has designed and funded urban education research and policy initiatives at the National Institute of Education, the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Simmons has worked directly with schools as special assistant to the superintendent in Prince George’s County Public Schools, and as director of Race Equity Programs for the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center. He serves on the boards of several national and local education organizations, including the Public Education Network, the Merck Institute, the National Center on Education and the Economy, the Campaign for Educational Equity and the Cowen Institute’s National Advisory Council, and serves as adviser to PLATO Learning Inc.

Claire E. Sylvan
Claire Sylvan is the founding executive director of Internationals Network for Public Schools, a national leader in educational innovation providing recent immigrant English language learners with a high-quality public education, pathways to college and full participation in democratic society. Internationals Network has substantially increased the number of affiliated International High Schools since its incorporation in 2004, while sustaining and deepening a dynamic collaborative network based on nearly a quarter century of excellence and school-based practice. Sylvan’s efforts at Internationals involve the organization’s strategy, core values, partnerships, leadership development and fundraising.

Prior to founding Internationals, Sylvan worked in diverse roles and settings spanning public secondary education, teacher education and community organizing. A nationally recognized expert and practitioner in both school reform and educating immigrant and English language learners, Sylvan has provided guidance on broad school reform initiatives in New York City and New York state as well as throughout the country. She has participated in local, state and national advisory boards, commissions and task forces on topics ranging from the development of state standards to the benefits and challenges of NCLB for English learners to the opening of new, small schools in New York City. Sylvan developed various innovative programs and practices for diverse populations of new learners of English in New York City public schools, led the Internationals Schools Partnership, and piloted the groundbreaking Early College Program at International High School at LaGuardia. She has authored various articles documenting the cross-section of educational reform and language development programs.

Uri Treisman
Philip “Uri” Treisman is professor of mathematics and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also the executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center. He chairs the steering committee of the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network—a coalition of 24 large urban districts together serving 4 million students that works to improve preK-12 mathematics teaching and learning. He serves on the Carnegie Corporation of New York-Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education and is a member of the leadership team of the National Research Council’s Strategic Education Research Partnership, which is focused on creating new knowledge to solve urgent problems of American education. Treisman is an adviser to the Aspen Institute's Urban Superintendents Network, serves on the National Advisory Board of the Military Child Education Coalition, and is chief juror for a U.S. Army-sponsored study of mobility of military families and its effects on their children’s education. From 1995 to 2004, he served as president of the board of the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications. Treisman was a founding board member of the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education. From 2001-2006, he chaired the Chancellor’s Advisory Panel for Mathematics in New York City.

For his work on nurturing minority student high achievement in mathematics, Treisman was named a MacArthur Fellow from 1992 to 1997. In 1999, he was named one of the outstanding leaders of higher education in the 20th century by the magazine Black Issues in Higher Education. He was named “2006 Scientist of the Year” by the Harvard Foundation of Harvard University for his outstanding contributions to mathematics. In all his work, Treisman is an advocate for equity and excellence in education for all children.