Our Leadership

Chong-Hao Fu is a career educator and former school leader who believes in the power of great teaching to help all young people access fair opportunity and achieve greatly. He has served as the CEO of Leading Educators since 2018.

Since joining Leading Educators 12 years ago as Chief Program Officer, Chong-Hao has led groundbreaking efforts to maximize the influence of our nation’s educators and accelerate instructional growth for students at the margins in some of the fastest-improving school systems in the country. He is a nationally recognized thought leader on teacher leadership and professional learning, equitable instructional practice, teacher diversity and pathways, and sustainable systems change.

Beyond Leading Educators, Chong-Hao is actively engaged in efforts to shape the future of teaching and learning as the co-chair of the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, an advisory board member for the ASU Next Education Workforce, and a steering committee member for the Coalition to Reimagine the Teaching Role. He also serves on the board of directors for the New Teacher Center and is a member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) and the Pahara Institute Fellowship.

Before his time at Leading Educators, Chong-Hao was the founding principal at KIPP Sharpstown in Houston, Texas. He began his teaching career as a middle and high school math teacher in Greenville, Mississippi. In 2016, Chong-Hao was a finalist for the Teach for America Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.Ed. from National Louis University.

Throughout her 22 years as an educator, Dr. LaKimbre Brown has made ensuring equity, fairness, and belonging for every student her personal mission.

Dr. Brown began her career as a Teach for America corps member (Phoenix ‘99), later becoming a coach, principal, and chief of schools. Most recently, she served as Chief of Schools for Lorain City Schools in Ohio, where 12 out of 15 schools showed gains on the state assessment and access to high-quality Pre-K programs tripled under her leadership. Previously as an Instructional Superintendent at District of Columbia Public Schools, she managed and coached principals for all dual-language campuses.

Dr. Brown earned her doctorate in educational leadership from Mills College, writing her dissertation on developing teacher leadership. She is the 2010 Newark Unified Elementary Principal of the Year, a National Board Certified teacher and coach, and a two-time Fulbright Scholar.

Laura is a content and program designer who loves creating adult learning that leads to student learning. She leads the data and evaluation and internal communications teams at Leading Educators, focused on efforts to learn from, share, and improve current and future programming. She has been part of the team since 2014.

Previously, Laura led the redesign of Leading Educators’ programming focused on the Common Core State Standards, teaching and leading for equity, instructional leadership, and content cycles. Before joining Leading Educators, she worked in the Office of Professional Learning at the Chicago Public Schools. Laura started her career teaching reading and writing to middle school students on Chicago’s south side.

Laura graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Psychology and earned her M.Ed. in Literacy, Language, and Culture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in Chicago where she spends her free time playing volleyball and pickleball, doing yoga, and reading too many books at once.

Daniel Obregon leads our partnerships, innovation, and marketing and communications efforts as the Chief Partnerships Officer.

Through more than 20 years of work in strategic marketing and communications, Dan's leadership has created new paths to innovation and impact in education technology, college and career readiness, the future of work, and most crucially, equity and access to opportunity. Before joining Leading Educators, Daniel was the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit dedicated to transforming the American workforce and education systems. There, he led cross-functional teams in brand marketing, project management, public relations, content strategy, editorial, digital, design, and events. Daniel also championed diversity and inclusion as the executive sponsor of JFF's employee resource group for Latinx/Latine-identifying employees.

Daniel's journey before JFF included pivotal roles at Common App, where he was instrumental in rebranding and launching several products that emphasize access, equity, and integrity in the college admissions process.

Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in communications from American University. He lives in Washington D.C. with his wife and three children.

Simone is an educator and operational leader who enjoys proving the possible. As the Chief Operating Officer, she oversees strategic planning, people, technology systems and facilities operations for the organization.

Before she joined Leading Educators, Simone was a principal in KIPP Texas (formerly KIPP Houston). Prior to that she was an assistant principal, a science teacher, and a Teach for America corps member. Before taking on her current role at Leading Educators, she served as a Program Director and a Managing Director of Program. She holds a Masters of Education Administration from National Louis University and an MBA from Tulane University.

As a first generation college student, Simone understands first hand the transformative impact of equitable educational access on individuals, families, and generations. She believes that all students- regardless of demographics - deserve access to high quality education to build the lives they desire. Having dedicated her career to working with and for students of color, her mission is to contribute to work that aims to make that a reality.

She currently lives in Sacramento, California with her husband and her dog, Penny. She spends her free time finding new dog parks, binge watching Netflix, and exploring the beauty of northern California.

Javier oversees all finance functions to ensure the sustainability of our mission, including accounting, budgeting, and forecasting. Additionally, he leads the implementation of finance policies and procedures, cost modeling and pricing, and investment management to better respond to the changing financial realities of school systems.

Javier holds an MBA from Duke University and an M.Ed from Yale University. Throughout his career, he has served as a private equity manager, head of finance for a motion unit of Intercorp, and most recently in financial leadership roles at KIPP New Orleans and Orleans Parish School Board. He was born and raised in Lima, Peru, and currently resides in Memphis, TN. In his free time enjoys watching and playing soccer with his son, exploring restaurants, going to heavy metal concerts, and playing the electric guitar.

Marishka grew up in East Los Angeles and Whittier, CA. As a first-generation college student, she was inspired by her parents to overcome obstacles and pursue higher education to pursue personal and professional aspirations. She has dedicated her career to working with communities and schools in historically marginalized and under-resourced communities at a national level.

She began her teaching career in LAUSD schools in South LA and Southeast LA neighborhoods and continued serving in public schools for nine years as a K – 2 teacher, a school-based, intervention coach serving teachers and students across grades K – 5, and a middle school Assistant Principal.

She then served as the Director of Teacher Development at the Partnership for LA Schools serving seventeen urban public schools that ranged from grades K-12 and was a key member of PLAS' central support instructional team. In this capacity, she supported principals to drive teacher effectiveness and to grow and leverage teacher leaders to become strong members of Instructional Leadership Teams. She continued to focus on areas of school leadership, teacher development, teacher leadership, school transformation, and systems level change while at TNTP as a project director supporting principals and teachers to implement standards based instruction primarily in school turnaround settings.

Most recently at New Teacher Center, she served as a founding leader of a national school leadership program as a senior director and led the program strategy for the federally awarded Education Innovation and Research grant across 120 rural and urban schools.

A former school leader and instructional coach, Marishka attended Scripps College (undergrad), Harvard Graduate (Education policy and management), UCLA Graduate (school leadership). She currently lives in Shaker Heights, OH and enjoys spending time with her husband and 2-year old daughter, riding her Peloton bike, cooking, and gardening.

Chong-Hao Fu is a career educator and former school leader who believes in the power of great teaching to help all young people access fair opportunity and achieve greatly. He has served as the CEO of Leading Educators since 2018.

Since joining Leading Educators 12 years ago as Chief Program Officer, Chong-Hao has led groundbreaking efforts to maximize the influence of our nation’s educators and accelerate instructional growth for students at the margins in some of the fastest-improving school systems in the country. He is a nationally recognized thought leader on teacher leadership and professional learning, equitable instructional practice, teacher diversity and pathways, and sustainable systems change.

Beyond Leading Educators, Chong-Hao is actively engaged in efforts to shape the future of teaching and learning as the co-chair of the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, an advisory board member for the ASU Next Education Workforce, and a steering committee member for the Coalition to Reimagine the Teaching Role. He also serves on the board of directors for the New Teacher Center and is a member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) and the Pahara Institute Fellowship.

Before his time at Leading Educators, Chong-Hao was the founding principal at KIPP Sharpstown in Houston, Texas. He began his teaching career as a middle and high school math teacher in Greenville, Mississippi. In 2016, Chong-Hao was a finalist for the Teach for America Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.Ed. from National Louis University.

Kara Helander is a Managing Director and Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer at the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm.

Prior to joining Carlyle, Ms. Helander was a Managing Director at BlackRock, where she led the firm’s global inclusion and diversity, and philanthropy initiatives. More recently, Ms. Helander consulted with organizations to develop corporate social responsibility and diversity strategies. She founded the Science of Diversity and Inclusion (SODI), a coalition of top companies and behavioral scientists working to design and test new approaches to accelerate diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. Ms. Helander also led corporate social responsibility at Barclays Global Investors (BGI). Prior to BGI, she launched and led the Western Region for Catalyst in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Helander received her MBA from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and her BA from Vanderbilt University.

Throughout his career in education and nonprofit leadership, Jay Altman has focused on creating equitable education opportunities for young people. He led the founding of Leading Educators in 2008, and he was co-founder of FirstLine Schools, a charter management organization serving 3,500 students across New Orleans, where he served as CEO from 2008-2019.

Through board service, Jay also works with SELF (Special Education Leader Fellowship), Catalyst-Ed, and the New Orleans Career Center. From 2005 to 2008, Jay worked in London as Director of Education for ARK Schools, developing a network of academies. Prior to this he was co-founder and a school leader of New Orleans Charter Middle School and co-founder of New Orleans Summerbridge, now Breakthrough New Orleans. He is currently serving as senior advisor to New Schools for New Orleans’ E3 (Executive Education Experience) program for aspiring charter management executives.

Doug Borchard serves as Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer for New Profit, managing the organization’s finances and internal operations. Doug works closely with portfolio organizations including Achievement First, iMentor, KIPP, Year Up, and currently serves on the boards of Leading Educators, New Classrooms, and UnboundEd.

Doug brings is an accomplished entrepreneur and senior executive in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors.

Doug worked as a program and logistics officer with Save the Children, where he was part of a team that started up field operations in the Sudan, and created and managed a multi-million dollar relief and development operation. He has served on the boards of directors of a number of growing organizations, including Venturcom, iMarket, and Computers for Youth. Doug graduated from Princeton with a BS in Engineering, and received a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Michelle Boyers is the CEO of the Give Forward Foundation which works to improve education in low-income schools in San Mateo County, California. She most recently worked as a Director at the Schusterman Foundation.

Prior to her work in philanthropy, Michelle spent most of her career in leadership roles in the public schools in New York City and Boston. Michelle served as the Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources for the Boston Public Schools where she oversaw the recruitment, hiring, support and HR services for nearly 10,000 school leaders, teachers and other school and central office staff. She also helped to lead the turnaround of one of Boston's lowest performing schools, Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury, as both the Chief Operating Officer and Chair of the Board.

Michelle has consulted to education non-profits, school districts and state departments of education on improving human capital management and teacher effectiveness. Michelle has a Bachelor's degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She serves on the national boards of Leading Educators, New Leaders and Teach Plus.

Sheila Brown is a national leader in pK-12 public education. Her specialized work includes strategic planning and action, principal supervision, comprehensive literacy and English language acquisition. She is a managing partner for Strategic Leadership Partners in Education.

Sheila previously served as the Co-Director of the Aspen Institute’s Education and Society Program. In this role, Sheila supported professional learning networks for urban school district leaders. The program also assisted policymakers and education leaders in supporting the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, strengthening human capital systems, and strategically allocating fiscal resources to teaching and learning priorities.

Sheila served as the Deputy Superintendent for the Boston Public Schools. In that role, she supervised one-third of the city’s schools and oversaw the district’s K-12 literacy initiative and “Whole School Improvement” work.

Dr. Tommy Chang is an education leader who has worked across the country, most recently serving as the Superintendent of Boston Public Schools from 2015-18. During his tenure, graduation rates increased and dropout rates decreased, and the school district had more high-performing schools than ever before. Prior to leading the school system in Boston, Dr. Chang served as the local instructional superintendent of the Intensive Support & Innovation Center at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), where he focused on school turnaround efforts and supported innovative school models in the school district.

He is a fearless advocate for educational equity and for fostering safe, welcoming, and sustaining learning environments for all students, including immigrants, LGBTQ youth, court-involved students, and homeless youth. He is former biology teacher at Compton High School and a founding principal of a charter school in Venice, California and also previously served as special assistant to the superintendent of LAUSD.

A native of Taiwan who immigrated with his family to the U.S. at age six, Dr. Chang grew up in Los Angeles and holds an Ed.D. from Loyola Marymount University, M.Ed.’s from the Principals Leadership Institute and the Teachers Education Program at the University of California Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Diana Gonzalez is an Expert Associate Partner in McKinsey & Company’s Washington, DC office.

Previously, Diana served as the Deputy Secretary of Higher Education under New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. She also served as Interim Secretary of Higher Education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of the pandemic, Diana was instrumental in the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (OSHE) leveraging more than $2 billion in federal funding to support New Jersey’s postsecondary sector. During her time in these roles, she worked closely with state stakeholders, including college presidents, faculty, and students, to create and effectuate more equitable higher education public policies, such as instituting the state’s inaugural free college promise programs.

Diana began her career as an early childhood teacher, later moving into higher education after completing her Master of Education degree at Rutgers University. She has worked closely with and advocated for students from various underrepresented groups throughout her career.

Tiffany Johnson Lewis has served in various roles at JP Morgan in her career, currently serving as Executive Director since July 2014, leading private investments due diligence and alternative investments group. Before serving as Executive Director, she spent 9 years as Vice President & Chief of Staff to the CEO and the Investment Management Operating Committee (IMOC) collaborating and implementing high-priority business initiatives.

Tiffany earned her B.S. in Finance from The Wharton School.

Dr. Claudy Jules is a leading expert in organization, leadership and change who focuses on focuses on driving value creation through the optimization of leadership capabilities. He is a sought-out speaker with a significant body of published work.

Dr. Jules recently joined McKinsey & Company’s Washington, DC office as a Partner. Previously, he headed Google’s Center of Expertise on Organizational Health and Change where he provided counsel and collaboration to Google business leads to strengthen performance and culture in their product areas.

Prior to that, he was the Managing Director and Global Head of Accenture Strategy's Leadership Consulting practice. At Accenture Strategy, operating at the nexus of strategy and technology, he counseled senior leaders of leading companies and public institutions on their most pressing organizational issues to build their workforce and drive business model innovation and growth.

Stuart is a leadership advisor in the Office of the CEO at Google. He formally lead Organization Development for Google’s technology businesses, including Search, Android, Maps, and YouTube, among others.

Stuart has more than two decades of experience in organization development, talent management, leadership development, and strategy consulting. He has been both a business leader and consultant at Accenture, Lominger, and Korn Ferry. Stuart started his career on AT&T’s Accelerated Management Program.

Stuart received his M.B.A. from the Haas School at the University of California, Berkeley and holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Davis. Stuart is a certified executive coach. He is a native Californian, where he lives with his wife and two adult children. Stuart has lived and worked in Japan, helped make an Emmy Award-winning film, and loves cycling.

Nina has more than 20 years of experience in corporate communications and human resources, specifically in executive and internal communications, as well as employee experience. She has worked with and advised CEOs and executive leaders across a number of industries, and led company change initiatives on both the business and people side.

Nina is currently Global Head of Internal Communications & Employee Experience at Axonius, a cyber security asset management start-up based in New York. She has held senior leadership roles at Google, Gap, and Pinterest, and has also run internal communications at Unilever and Altria Group. Nina is a native New Yorker, a mom, almost trilingual, and a travel enthusiast. She received a BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University and an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College.

Nina has been active in the non-profit community for years. She served on the board of Cause Effective from 2005-2015 (including chairing the Board in 2014), and has been a team leader for the New York Women’s Foundation Grants Advisory Committee, as well as a previous member of the Education Committee of the Anti-Defamation League. She has also volunteered for Citizen Schools, Step Up Women’s Network, inMotion and New York Cares.

Aylon Samouha is the co-founder and co-CEO of Transcend, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary, learning environments that realize the infinite potential of all students.

Before co-founding Transcend, Aylon served as the Chief Schools Officer at Rocketship Education, where he led the highest-performing network of low-income schools in California. Additionally, Aylon spent several years as a Senior Vice President at Teach For America, directing pre-service institutes and service development for teachers.
Aylon's expertise and insights have been widely recognized, and he has been invited to speak at various convenings, including the ASU+GSV conference, The New Schools Venture Fund Summit, Digital Promise's Annual Convening, and numerous others dedicated to advancing education innovation globally.

Aylon holds a BA in English from Columbia University. He delights in his roles as husband and father and is an accomplished jazz guitarist, captivating audiences throughout the Chicago area with his performances.

Robert Q. Berry, III is the Samuel Braley Gray Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Virginia the Curry School of Education & Human Development with an appointment in Curriculum Instruction and Special Education.

A former mathematics teacher, he teaches elementary and special education mathematics methods courses in the teacher education program at the University of Virginia. Additionally, he teaches graduate level mathematics education courses and courses for in-service teachers seeking a mathematics specialist endorsement. His research focuses on equity issues in mathematics education, pre-and in-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, and mathematics instructional quality. Berry has extensive experience in classroom observation and has collaborated with other researchers to develop an observation instrument, Mathematics Scan, to examine mathematics teaching quality.

A focused and passionate educator, Miah has more than ten years' experience at the classroom, district, and state levels.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Miah began her journey as a reading and English teacher in the Detroit Public Schools. From Detroit she moved to the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, NV, where she continued to teach and build an expertise in secondary ELA, standards, adult learning, curriculum development, and professional development by serving as a district secondary literacy project facilitator, serving all of the district's middle and high school ELA teachers. After a suite of rich and robust experiences as a district leader, Miah transitioned to the Tennessee Department of Education where she served as the K-12 Literacy Coordinator. In this capacity, Miah's primary responsibilities included developing systems to ensure content accuracy and alignment for the literacy portion of the state assessment, TNReady.

In 2016, Miah completed her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt's Peabody College, obtaining an Ed.D in Educational Administration and Public Policy. Miah joined the Achieve staff in 2016 as the Director, ELA & Literacy. In that role, Miah led the work of ensuring states maintain high college-and-career standards for ELA and assessment systems that align to those standards. Miah provided guidance to states reviewing and revising their state standards and assessments.

Jessica Eadie is the Chief Operating Officer at Student Achievement Partners. Jessica joined Student Achievement Partners in 2011 from the New York City Department of Education where she was the Executive Director of Assessment.

Jessica holds a bachelor's from Boston College and a master's in business administration from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Heather C. Hill studies policies and programs designed to improve mathematics teacher and teaching quality. Her recent research focuses on: teacher professional development, instructional coaching, teacher evaluation, changes over time in teachers' mathematical knowledge and instructional quality in mathematics, and the teacher experiences and characteristics that lead to high-quality instruction and stronger student outcomes.

Hill and her team have developed assessments that capture teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and teachers' mathematical quality of instruction, assessments now widely available to researchers, instructional coaches, evaluators, and policy-makers via online training and administrative systems.

Hill is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and serves on the AERA grants board, on the editorial boards of several journals, and as an advisor to numerous research projects and policy efforts in both the U.S. and abroad. She is co-author of Learning Policy: When State Education Reform Works with David K. Cohen (Yale Press, 2001).

Dr. Matthew P. Steinberg is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in the College of Education and Human Development, a University Affiliate Faculty at the Schar School of Policy and Government, and Director of EdPolicyForward: The Center for Education Policy at George Mason University.

Dr. Steinberg is an Affiliated Researcher with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, a Faculty Affiliate with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and an IUR Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research. Dr. Steinberg's research addresses issues of educational significance at the intersection of the economics of education and education policy, including: teacher evaluation and human capital; urban school reform; school discipline and safety; and school finance. His work informs local and national policy discussions on the impact of education policies and practices on the distribution of teacher effectiveness and the educational outcomes of students, particularly the most disadvantaged among the population.

A recipient of the 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Steinberg received his PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago. Prior to graduate study, he was an investment banker and a New York City Teaching Fellow.