Our Team & Leadership
Staff






Leadership & Advisory Council



Susan A. Buffett
Chairman, The Sherwood Foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and the Buffett Childhood Fund



Christopher Edley, Jr.
Co-Founder and President Emeritus, Opportunity Institute; Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Ronald Ferguson
Creator of the Tripod Project for School Improvement, Faculty Co-Chair and Director of Achievement Gap Initiative, Harvard University

Bill Frist
Professor of Business and Medicine, Vanderbilt University; former Majority Leader, United States Senate

Sandra Gutierrez
National Program Director, Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, Families in Schools

George Halvorson
Chair, California’s First 5 Commission on Children and Families, Former Chairman, Kaiser Permanente

James Heckman
Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago



Joan Lombardi, PhD
Visiting Scholar, Stanford Center on Early Childhood, Graduate School of Education




Kris Perry
Deputy Secretary of the California Health & Human Services Agency for Early Childhood Development



Ralph Smith
Managing Director, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Former Senior Vice President, Annie E. Casey Foundation.




Dana L. Suskind
Professor of Surgery, University of Chicago; Director, the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program; Founder and Director, the Thirty Million Words Initiative

Sara Martinez Tucker
CEO, National Math + Science Initiative; Former Undersecretary, U.S. Department of Education


Jane Waldfogel
Compton Foundation Centennial Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work
