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.

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.

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.

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.

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.