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August 23, 2012
What's Inside
Message from our Founder & CEO, Scott Morgan
President George W. Bush Speaks with EP Fellows
Education Pioneers Celebrates 2012 Fellows
Profiles of Select 2012 Fellows
EP Alumni Receive Honors
Stay Connected with Activate ED
Exciting Opportunities in Education
Senator Michael Bennet (CO) Gives Keynote Address at DC Showcase!
On a night where Education Pioneers celebrated 53 new Washington DC-based Fellows, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado urged the new Fellows to focus not on individual successes or failures, but on steering education reform toward a “path of continuous improvement.”
EP Staff Update
Brendan Cullen, Education Pioneers’ former Vice President of Growth and Innovation, is preparing to join the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a venture philanthropy group focused on early-stage high-impact organizations (and the first major supporter of Education Pioneers), where he will serve as a Portfolio Director and help the Foundation establish their east coast office.
Brendan served Education Pioneers for nearly seven years, and played a major leadership role in building the organization. Brendan has truly exemplified Education Pioneers’ entrepreneurial spirit and our core values of courage, optimism, collaboration, and action.
Thank you, Brendan, for all that you have given to Education Pioneers over the years! We wish you continued success in your exciting new role with the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.
Connect With Us
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Dear Maxeme,
It’s been a fantastic summer at Education Pioneers! I’ve been traveling around the country to meet our Fellows and see them in action during Education Pioneers’ leadership development workshops. What I’ve seen and heard has inspired me, including our Fellows’ work with Partners on high-impact projects, their moving leadership stories, and their deep commitment to helping transform education.
In June, we launched our largest-ever cohort of Graduate School Fellows: 333 top emerging leaders, including 12 Fellows in our pilot yearlong placement, working with over 160 Partners across the country. These leaders average nearly five years of full-time work experience. In addition:
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35% are brand new to the education sector; and
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55% identify as people of color, with 35% identifying as African American or Latino.
Additionally, our Analyst Fellows and their Partner supervisors reported overwhelmingly positive outcomes after the second cohort of the program, featuring 29 Analyst Fellows, concluded in June:
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97% of Fellows are extremely/very conversant in education issues (vs. 31% pre-Fellowship),
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100% of Partners rated their Fellows overall performance and quality of work as excellent/good, and
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100% of Partners would recommend the program to another organization.
We are preparing to launch the next cohort of Analyst Fellows, and with more than 60 Fellows placed, have already doubled the number of Analyst Fellows from last year. We are thrilled to see so many talented leaders eager to help accelerate excellence in education as we work to transform education into the best led and managed sector in the U.S.
For more exciting summer updates, read on!
Best wishes,
.jpg "Scott Morgan Signature (200x72)")
Founder & CEO
Education Pioneers
President George W. Bush Speaks with EP Fellows
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, spoke with Education Pioneers Fellows in Dallas in early August, leading a discussion centered on the idea that every child deserves a quality education.
President Bush opened with some general remarks, highlighting the need for accountability and discussing the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Throughout his comments and a discussion that followed a common theme emerged: Every child in America should be given an equal opportunity to learn, despite his or her life circumstances.
Education Pioneers Fellow Monique Gray, who works with The George W. Bush Institute’s Alliance to Reform Educational Leadership (AREL), helped organize the event and participated in the discussion.
“Education reform is one of the major initiatives for the Institute, and hearing firsthand President Bush's commitment to education gives me an even greater context and appreciation for the work I've been doing this summer,” said Gray.
Read more about President Bush's visit.
Education Pioneers Celebrates 2012 Fellows
We have had great Showcase events throughout the country to celebrate the impact of talented leaders and organizations working to transform education into the best led and managed sector in the U.S. economy, and learn about timely initiatives led by our 2012 Fellows and the ways in which they are accelerating excellence in education.
We’d especially like to thank our keynote speakers: Jill Vialet, Founder and CEO, Playworks (Bay Area); Jeff Riley, Superintendent, Lawrence Public Schools (Boston); Andrew Broy, President, Illinois Network of Charter Schools (Chicago); Roy Romer, former Governor of Colorado and former Superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District (Los Angeles); Jean Desravines, CEO, New Leaders (New York & New Jersey); and Caprice Young, Vice President for Education, Laura and John Arnold Foundation (Texas).
Senator Michael Bennet (CO)
In Washington, DC, Senator Michael Bennet (CO), former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, gave the keynote address and urged the new Fellows to focus not on individual successes or failures, but on steering education reform toward a “path of continuous improvement.”
Read more about the Senator’s keynote address.
Special thanks to our national Showcase sponsor, the MetLife Foundation.
Transformational Impact: Profiles of Select 2012 Fellows
We are thrilled to welcome 333 Graduate School Fellows to Education Pioneers’ nationwide network of top leaders and managers!
 “I wanted to engage in the work of transforming our education system to provide high-quality, individualized educational opportunities to every student regardless of background,” said Tom Arnett, a Graduate School Fellow in New York City. Placed with Achievement First, Tom is doing just that as he develops an innovative blended learning pilot program for the public charter school network’s summer school. Combining small-group teacher-led instruction with computer-based learning in a classroom setting, Tom is drawing from his experience in the classroom with Teach for America to realize tangible gains in student achievement.
 A public and charter school teacher for seven years, Graduate School Fellow Jennifer Hickey is committed to transforming results for students. Now placed at DC Public Schools, she is leveraging her recruitment and team management experience with her concrete classroom knowledge to develop human capital best practices for the district. “As a Fellow, I am working on the Central Office Effectiveness Team, where I am creating a principals’ toolkit to improve navigation of the organization, streamlining recruitment, building a high caliber talent pipeline, and focusing on employee evaluation and engagement,” said Jennifer.
 After working for several years as a media executive, Graduate School Fellow Robin Reid is merging her creative talents with her passion for empowering young people. She is placed with Wireless Generation for the summer, an organization that provides educational software and consulting services to help teachers excel. Robin collaborates with a team of science curriculum developers from UC Berkeley to help conceptualize the incorporation of technologies into their curricular structure. “My experience as a creative executive in media, where I managed ideation, execution and delivery of high profile entertainment projects, as well as my current research and design work at NYU’s Interactive Media program, helped me to provide the science [curriculum developers] with the seeds of affordable, engaging concepts that they could consider to fold into future lesson plans,” explained Robin.
 Zachary Cohen, a Graduate School Fellow in the Washington, DC area, has witnessed “the potential of business leaders to transform lives.” He is dedicated to using his business expertise, which he accrued while working at Upham’s Corner Main Street revitalizing a low-income neighborhood and is further honing as an MBA student at MIT Sloan, to drive meaningful change in the education sector. Zachary is placed with the Walton Family Foundation (WFF), an organization dedicated to improving educational achievement for all students, and creating a plan for the foundation to respond to leadership recruitment and development challenges. “My background in organizational leadership and project/team management enabled me to create and implement a strategy that WFF will be able to use to guide future investments.”
Education Pioneers Alumni Receive Honors
 Alexandra Bernadotte, Founder and CEO of Beyond 12, has been named a 2012 Ashoka Fellow. Ashoka identifies and supports nearly 3,000 promising social entrepreneurs in over 60 countries, and will aide Alex in growing Beyond 12. Beyond 12 bridges the data gap between K-12 and higher education, enabling high schools and colleges to track at-risk students and provide them with the academic and social support they need to succeed in college. To date, Beyond 12 has tracked nearly 12,500 students’ college progress, worked with over 90 partner schools and organizations in California, and is in the process of expanding nationwide. Alex is “extremely grateful to Education Pioneers for supporting [her] from the beginning when Beyond 12 was just a dream.” Learn more about Beyond 12 at www.beyond12.org.
 Boston cohort 2011 Alumnus Rey Faustino has been named a 2012 Echoing Green Fellow. Echoing Green’s highly competitive global Fellowship provides more than $2 million in seed support to a diverse group of emerging social entrepreneurs every year. From thousands of applicants, typically fewer than one percent are ultimately selected to receive up to $90,000 over two years to support the launch of their new organizations. The Fellowship will help Rey grow his organization One Degree, which connects families to poverty-fighting resources through a web database and mobile app of social services, coupled with an in-school resource desk that’s staffed by trained community volunteers. Learn more about One Degree at www.1deg.org.
Stay connected with Activate ED
Activate ED just launched our full recruiting site – www.activate-ed.org – to attract more top leaders, managers, and analysts to transform education!
Our collaborative organizations – The Broad Center, Education Pioneers, and the Strategic Data Project – are excited to join together to expand recruiting efforts, share tools and resources, and build a common network to connect and empower our Fellowship participants, Alumni, and Partner agencies, including public school districts, charter management organizations, state and federal education departments, and education nonprofits.
Visit www.activate-ed.org to stay connected and informed with fellowship information, alumni profiles, and news about our member organizations.
You can also stay connected with Activate ED by:
Signing up for our email list
Liking us on Facebook
Following us on Twitter
Connect with us on LinkedIn
Exciting Opportunities in Education
In an effort to provide the most effective support to our job-seeking Alumni, we migrated our job board and resume book to Talent Bridge, an online platform hosted jointly with The Broad Center, where Alumni can search for jobs and employers can search for top leaders and managers.
We have 550 Alumni and Fellows who have joined Talent Bridge. Make sure to join your fellow Pioneers at http://talentbridge.educationpioneers.org! (If you are an Alumnus who is not on Talent Bridge, email Amata Small to join.)
Exciting job opportunities currently listed on Talent Bridge include:
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Chief Financial Officer – KIPP Foundation
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Executive Director, Washington – Stand for Children
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Director for District and School Turnaround – MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
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Chief Information Officer – Louisiana Department of Education
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Director of School Support, Washington DC Network – The Achievement Network
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