Our National
Governing Board
Our board
Alan Safran
He led the Match Charter Public School network in Boston for 9 years, where he was the co-designer of the school’s high dosage tutoring program, the first such model in the country (and helped coin the phrase “high dosage tutoring.”). He and AJ Gutierrez then incubated the dissemination of high dosage tutoring out of the Match School base, to Lawrence MA, Stamford CT, and Chicago, IL, and then, in 2014, founded the edtech nonprofit Saga. Alan has a law degree from George Washington University, a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, and he and his wife split their time between Boston, MA and Washington, DC. They have three grown children, in DC, NY and LA, and a mid-size, middle-aged black labrador, Colbie.
Alex Cortez
Alex Cortez is a partner at Bellwether. Alex has more than 21 years of experience working in education and social change as a consultant, a school operator, and in philanthropy. He has deep expertise in helping organizations scale a combination of their Direct Impact by serving beneficiaries; their Widespread Impact by building the capacity of partners to replicate their model; and their Systemic Impact by shifting mindsets, relationships, and power to in turn shift policies, practices, and resource flows.
His clients at Bellwether include organizations providing workforce programming and postsecondary advising, philanthropies, place-based education program and advocacy organizations, and after-school program providers. While at Bellwether, Alex has published analyses on a range of education sector topics, including how to create more equitable and effective postsecondary pathways; how organizations can scale through Direct, Widespread, and Systemic Impact; Teacher Apprenticeship Degrees; philanthropic best practices; and how parent power organizations scale.
Prior to Bellwether, Alex was a managing partner with New Profit, where he focused on funding and advising nonprofits growing their impact in K-12, postsecondary pathways, and parent power and systems change. Alex formerly served as a regional director of growth and sustainability at the KIPP Foundation and as chief of staff, strategy, and execution with KIPP Houston Public Schools. He began his career in for-profit consulting and then nonprofit consulting as a manager with The Bridgespan Group, where he worked on projects related to K-12 and higher education innovation, youth and adult workforce development, philanthropy, the environment, and aging.
Alex sits on the boards of multiple education organizations and serves his community as a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Higher Education, where he leads efforts to report on measures of economic mobility and builds state longitudinal data systems to drive evidence-based policymaking. He has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and an MPA and an MBA with honors from Harvard University. Raised in New Orleans, Alex currently resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Dr. Christina Grant
She was previously the State Superintendent of Education for the District of Columbia, overseeing standards, assessments, accountability, and grantmaking for the city’s schools. In that role, she directed a $100 million investment in post-pandemic recovery and led the first update to social studies standards in 20 years. Before that, she served as Chief of Charter Schools and Innovation for The School District of Philadelphia, redesigning accountability systems for alternative and innovative schools and guiding the district’s COVID-19 response.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Grant held leadership positions at Great Oaks Foundation and the New York City Department of Education. She began her career as a teacher in Harlem and later taught at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
In 2025, she was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Dr. Grant holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, master’s degrees from Columbia and Fordham, and a bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University.
Daryl Mintz
Daryl spent most of his career at Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational media company most well-known for the production and distribution of Sesame Street. Daryl started as assistant controller in 1999 and became chief financial officer in 2010. As CFO, he led the company’s financial operations as well as its technology and facilities functions.
After he left Sesame Workshop in 2022, Daryl was chief financial and administrative officer of the Robin Hood Foundation, one of New York City’s largest philanthropic entities dedicated to combating poverty, before becoming chief financial and strategy officer for The Second City, the comedy club, comedy theater, and improv school.
Daryl also serves on the national Board of Directors of Jumpstart, a non-profit that advances learning outcomes for young children by recruiting and supporting caring adults to deliver high-quality programming.
He began his career in public accounting at Wiss & Company in Livingston, NJ, after graduating from Rutgers University with a degree in accounting.
Jared Taillefer
Clerk
Jennie Magiera
Her work centers around acknowledging problems and finding innovative ways to navigate them so as to allow teachers and students to dive into classroom “edventures”: student-centered, passion-based experiential learning.
Julia Quinn
She was previously the Associate Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Education Lab, where she worked across a portfolio of research projects in Chicago and New York City in partnership with government agencies and local nonprofits to use data and data science to improve educational outcomes, prevent violence, and reduce the harms of the criminal justice system. Her work included large-scale randomized controlled trials of educational and social-emotional interventions, work on domestic violence and police reform, and a multi-city, multi-methods study of underground gun markets. She also helped to lead communications and fundraising efforts for the Labs.
Prior to the University of Chicago, Julia worked on gun violence and juvenile justice reform, including research on the economic implications of changing the age of juvenile jurisdiction.
Karine Apollon
Prior to this, Karine worked for over two decades in a variety of leadership roles at the children’s publisher Scholastic, where she scaled literacy and mentorship initiatives and launched Scholastic’s family and community engagement work, with a focus on supporting and empowering marginalized communities.
Dr. Karl Reid
Prior to these roles, he served as Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI) at MIT. He has served as the executive director of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) since 2014.
Before MIT, he was the first Chief Inclusion Officer and Senior Provost at Northeastern University. For the over 28 years, he has been a leading advocate for increasing college access and opportunity for low-income and minority youth. Dr. Reid came to NSBE from the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).
Before his service at UNCF, he worked in positions of progressive responsibility to increase diversity at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he left as associate dean of undergraduate education and director of the Office of Minority Education.
While working at MIT, Dr. Reid earned his Doctor of Education degree at Harvard University. As an Executive in Residence at Saga, he is a part-time senior leader, focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging for the entire organization.
Kassie Davis
Davis was with The Chicago Community Trust from 2004 to 2006, where she was senior program officer for arts and culture. From 2000 to 2003, she served as project director of Giving Greater Chicago, an initiative of the Donors Forum of Chicago promoting the creation of permanent philanthropic capital. Earlier, Davis was executive director of the Illinois Arts Council, the state agency responsible for funding the arts. Davis, who holds a B.A. degree from Stephens College and a M.B.A. degree from Loyola University Chicago, entered the world of Chicago philanthropy in 1990 when she started the corporate contributions program at Marshall Field’s.
Melanie Dukes
Prior to launching EdVenture Lab, Melanie served as the Associate Program Director of K-9 Education at the Overdeck Family Foundation, where she led the organization’s K-9 grantmaking portfolio team, allocating $24M across 40+ organizations. Her career spans pivotal roles in education technology, non-profit management, and finance, including positions at 2U, Inc., Relay Graduate School of Education, and KIPP NYC Public Schools.
Melanie’s commitment to education extends beyond her professional roles. She serves on multiple non-profit boards, including Saga Education, Throughline Learning, Leading Educators, and Black Wildflower Fund.
Melanie earned an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, and graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three girls.
Michael Levine
Michael serves on boards including the Forum for Youth Investment, We Are Family Foundation, Classroom, Inc, Journeys in Film, Woot Math, and DigiLearn. Dr. Levine is a Pahara-Aspen Education Reform Fellow and a frequent adviser to the White House and the U.S. Department of Education. He writes for professional and public affairs journals, including a column for Huffington Post and is a frequent keynote speaker at education and technology conferences around the world. His new book, co-authored with Lisa Guernsey of New America is Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens. He received his B.S from Cornell University and PhD in Social Policy from the Heller School at Brandeis University.
Phyllis Lockett
Before starting LEAP, Phyllis was a driving force behind Chicago’s charter movement. As founding president and CEO of New Schools for Chicago, she helped raise more than $70 million to support opening 80 new public schools, primarily charters. Her work more than tripled the number of charter schools and drove Chicago’s first magnet school replication. For nearly a decade, she focused on bringing quality public schools to communities of high need and advocating for school choice.
Stanton P. Hill
Stanton Hill brings two decades of experience in financial strategy and nonprofit operations. Prior to joining NSBE, he held several roles at the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), where he managed multimillion-dollar operating budgets, streamlined financial processes, and led grant management initiatives totaling over $30 million.
He began his career with a focus on business analytics and process optimization and advanced through NSBE’s leadership ranks: from Director of Finance and Accounting to Chief Financial Officer, and now Chief Financial & Operating Officer.
Stanton Hill earned his Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Morehouse College and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and High Technology from Northeastern University.
Tony Luckett
He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and two bachelors degrees from Dartmouth College (mechanical engineering and sculpture).
Wendy Haines
Before UBS, Wendy spent more than a decade working to advance educational equity in leadership roles across the public and nonprofit sectors, including as the Executive Director of Citizen Schools NY, a high quality after-school program provider, and as a founding team member of New Classrooms, an education technology nonprofit, where she helped create its sales and growth operations. Wendy also raised philanthropic funding for NYC Public Schools and began her career in marketing at American Express. Wendy has a Master of Public Administration from NYU and a Bachelor’s degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Senior advisors to the board
Diane Hessan
Senior Advisor to the Board
She’s led two companies in the education space, as CEO of Startup Institute, and as EVP of The Forum Corporation, a large training and development company ultimately sold to Pearson. Diane received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and her B.A. in Economics from Tufts University.
Josh Edelman
Senior Advisor to the Board
Prior to joining Transcend in the winter of 2022, Josh spent over a decade at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Senior Program Officer then Deputy Director in the K-12 program before serving as a Senior Advisor for the US Program President. Specifically, when on the K-12 team, Josh co-led a 500M portfolio focused on increasing the number of Black, Latino, and low-income students who earn a high
school diploma, enroll in a postsecondary institution, and are on track in their first year to attain a credential with labor market value.
Before Gates, Josh worked in two public school districts focused on creating and improving school options and learning environments. Josh was the Deputy Chief of School Innovation (OSI) for the DC
Public Schools, which focused on supporting and empowering 58 DC public schools through the infusion of unique programmatic elements and was the Executive Officer of the Office of New Schools (ONS) at
Chicago Public Schools, which worked to recruit, develop, and support schools as part of a mayoral initiative to create 100 new schools over a seven-year period.
Josh has also been a principal at The SEED School, a public charter boarding school in Washington DC, and he taught high school social studies for ten years in Massachusetts and California before working with SEED.
Josh has a B.A in American History from Harvard University, a Master’s in Education from Stanford University, and a Master’s in Educational Administration, also from Stanford University. Josh is or has
served on the boards of AVID (current), Breakthrough Collaborative, Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, City Works DC (current), City Year DC, City Works DC (current), Education Forward DC
(current), EL Haynes Public Charter School (current – board chair), Leading Now (current), Maya Angelou Public Charter School, The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools and One World Network of
Schools (current).
Josh lives in DC with his wife, Heather, and has two young adult daughters, Ellika and Zoe.
Lewis Leiboh
Previously, Lewis worked at Google, leading partnerships and business development with top educational technology partners globally, supporting them in building great products, growing sustainable businesses, and reaching and impacting teachers, parents, and students.
Before joining Google, Lewis headed up Teach For America’s national team focused on educational technology and data systems initiatives. He spent ten years with Teach For America, including as a 7th and 8th grade math teacher in Phoenix, AZ. Prior to TFA, Lewis helped launch and manage wireless start-up software firm Lobby7, provider of a next generation multimodal application platform for mobile operators. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, and a Master of Education from Arizona State University.
Lewis believes technology can play an important role in the incredibly hard work to improve academic achievement and put students on a different life path.
Roseanna Ander
Senior Advisor to the Board for Evidence and Impact
Under Ander’s leadership, the Crime Lab and the Education Lab have produced cutting-edge research on gun violence prevention, criminal justice reform, and education that has led to significant impact and policy change in Chicago and across the nation. Education Lab research has helped generate more than $120 million in public investment for highly effective, evidence-based programs to ensure all students have the opportunity for future success. The impact of the Crime Lab’s evaluation of Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (BAM) program, a cognitive-behavioral therapy program delivered in the Chicago Public Schools, led Chicago to redirect millions of dollars to expand the program’s strategy and support 57 nonprofits across the city. BAM and similar behavioral science approaches now play a vital role in the city’s efforts to reduce violence.
During her tenure at the Crime Lab and Education Lab, Ander has also played a key role in the launch of two major national initiatives: the Community Safety Leadership Academies (CSLA) and the Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI). The CSLA is composed of the Policing Leadership Academy and the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy and is designed to train future leaders in policing and community violence intervention. In the education sector, PLI aims to overcome pandemic learning loss by scaling high-dosage, high-impact tutoring in classrooms across the country. Ander was also instrumental in helping to launch the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI), a program that connects men most at risk of gun violence involvement and victimization with cognitive-behavioral therapy, jobs, and wraparound supports.
Ander has extensive experience as a policy advisor, including serving on the public safety transition teams for Chicago Mayors Lori Lightfoot and Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, and she has been featured as a leader in Public Safety in Leaders magazine. Ander is on the board of Gun Violence Archives, a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, and a member of the Chicago Network. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Ander oversaw the Joyce Foundation’s gun violence prevention program. Her contributions included providing seed funding for the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and developing a seminal report on Firearm Violence for the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. At Joyce, she also advised on grantmaking for early childhood education efforts. Before her time at the Joyce Foundation, Ander served as a Soros Justice Fellow with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and worked for the Harvard Injury Control Center and the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children. Ander holds an M.S. from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Former board members
Antonio J. Gutierrez
Co-Founder (2014-2025)
With a keen focus on corporate strategy and product innovation, AJ has led a successful ed-tech acquisition and established strategic collaborations with renowned organizations such as NORC, the University of Chicago Education Lab, and the University of Amsterdam. His fearless approach to innovation has cultivated valuable partnerships with esteemed philanthropic organizations, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, New Profit, Walton Family Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, and the Overdeck Family Foundation.
A respected thought leader and guest lecturer at MIT, AJ’s tireless commitment to evidence-based policy has significantly impacted education policy at local and national levels. His influence has spurred initiatives like the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS), which aims to improve educational outcomes for all students.
A Posse Scholar, AJ holds a BA from Union College and an MBA from Boston University Questrom School of Business. In 2023, he was awarded both the prestigious Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship and the Hermes Creative Platinum Award.
Meredith Liu
(In memoriam)
Meredith was the President and CEO of The Primary School, a new health and education model in E Palo Alto, CA founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. She earned her BA in Economics from Dartmouth College, magna cum laude, and completed her MBA, with distinction, at Harvard Business School (HBS).
Previously, she served as the managing director of the School Turnaround Group (STG) at Mass Insight – a research, policy, and consulting organization dedicated to fundamentally transforming the state and local education systems that serve our country’s lowest performing schools. She was also a management consultant at Bain and Company and a dean and board member at Codman Academy, a high performing charter high school in Boston.