Teacher Leader Academy

Dr. Frederick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on K–12 and higher education issues. The author of Education Week’s popular blog “Rick Hess Straight Up,” Dr. Hess is also an executive editor of Education Next, and a regular contributor to Forbes and the Hill. He is the founder and chairman of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network.

An educator, political scientist, and author, Dr. Hess has published in scholarly outlets, such as American Politics Quarterly, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Teachers College Record, and Urban Affairs Review. His work has also appeared in popular outlets including the Atlantic, National Affairs, the Dispatch, Fox News, National Review, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

His books include A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K–12 Education (Teachers College Press, 2021), Letters to a Young Education Reformer (Harvard Education Press, 2017), The Cage-Busting Teacher (Harvard Education Press, 2015), Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age: Using Learning Science to Reboot Schooling (Corwin, 2013), Cage-Busting Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2013), The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas (Harvard University Press, 2010), Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2010), Common Sense School Reform (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004), Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (Brookings Institution Press, 2002), and Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform (Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

Dr. Hess started his career as a high school social studies teacher. He has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University. He is also the senior founding fellow of the Public Education Foundation’s Leadership Institute of Nevada.

Dr. Hess has an MA and a PhD in government, in addition to an MEd in teaching and curriculum, from Harvard University. He also has a BA in political science from Brandeis University.

Liz City is Executive Director of Reach Every Reader at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. City has served as a teacher, instructional coach, principal, and consultant, in each role focused on helping all children, and the educators who work with them, realize their full potential. City’s work is a combination of pragmatic: “How can we do our work better every day for children now?” — and imaginative — “What might learning and the systems that support learning look like in the not-too-distant future?” City fell in love with teaching in a closet-turned-classroom in St. Petersburg, Russia. She still loves teaching, and sees leadership as a continuous act of learning and teaching. From her early passion for literacy as a middle school Humanities teacher to her current work in developing leaders, common themes in City’s work are collaboration, evidence-based discussion, asking the right questions, thinking and acting strategically, and learning through doing.

She has authored/co-authored many publications, including: Meeting Wise: Making the Most of Collaborative Time for Educators (2014); Data Wise, Revised and Expanded Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2013); Strategy in Action: How School Systems Can Support Powerful Learning and Teaching (2009); Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning (2009); Resourceful Leadership: Tradeoffs and Tough Decisions on the Road to School Improvement (2008); and The Teacher’s Guide to Leading Student-Centered Discussions: Talking about Texts in the Classroom (2006).

Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., is Research Professor and Director of the Edunomics Lab (Edunomicslab.org), a research center focused on exploring and modeling education finance policy and practice. She leads the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Certificate in Education Finance, which equips participants with practical skills in strategic fiscal management, finance policy analysis, and financial leadership.

Dr. Roza’s research traces the effects of fiscal policies at the federal, state, and district levels for their implications on resources at the school and classroom levels. Her calculations of dollar implications and cost-equivalent trade-offs have prompted changes in education finance policy at all levels in the education system.

Dr. Roza has led projects on state and school district finance policy, financial equity, pensions, compensation, higher education finance, and other related topics, including the Institute for Education Sciences multi-year study of weighted student funding, the Finance and Productivity Initiative at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), and the Schools in Crisis Rapid Response Paper Series. She has written extensively on financial transparency and the opportunity for equity and productivity. Her work has been published by the Brookings Institution, Public Budgeting and Finance, Education Next, Governing, Peabody Journal of Education, and the American Journal of Education. Dr. Roza is author of the highly regarded education finance book, Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

Dr. Roza regularly works with state and local policymakers and education leaders and presents at research conferences and to national associations across the country, including the National Conference of State Legislators, National Association of State Boards of Education, Association of School Business Officers, Education Writers Association, and Policy Innovators in Education Network. She is frequently interviewed in the national media, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Education Week.

Dr. Roza teaches as part of the Certificate in Education Finance and in programs elsewhere, including the University of Washington, Rice University, and the Broad Center.

Prior to her appointment at Georgetown University, she served as Senior Economic Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Earlier, she served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy teaching thermodynamics at the Naval Nuclear Power School. Dr. Roza earned a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Washington and a B.S. from Duke University. She also studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Amsterdam.

Karen L. Mapp, Ed.D., is Professor of Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and the faculty director of the Education Policy and Management Master’s Program. Over the past twenty years, Mapp’s research and practice focus has been on the cultivation of partnerships among families, community members and educators that support student achievement and school improvement. She served as the co-coordinator with Professor Mark Warren of the Community Organizing and School Reform Research Project and as a core faculty member in the Doctorate in Educational Leadership (Ed.L.D.) program at HGSE. She is a founding member of the District Leaders Network on Family and Community Engagement as well as the National Family and Community Engagement Working Group, is a trustee of the Hyams Foundation in Boston, MA, and is also on the board of the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) and the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) in Washington, DC. From 2011 to 2013, Mapp served as a consultant on family engagement to the United States Department of Education in the Office of Innovation and Improvement.

She joined HGSE in January of 2005 after serving for eighteen months as the Deputy Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement for the Boston Public Schools (BPS). While working with the BPS, she continued to fulfill her duties as president of the Institute for Responsive Education (IRE). She joined IRE in 1997 as Project Director, was appointed vice-president of IRE in May of 1998 and served as president from September 1998 to December 2004. Mapp holds a Doctorate and Master’s of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Master’s in Education from Southern Connecticut State University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Mapp is the author and co-author of several articles and books about the role of families and community members in the work of student achievement and school improvement including: A New Wave Of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and Community Connections on Student Achievement (2002); “Having Their Say: Parents Describe How and Why They are Engaged in Their Children’s Learning” (2003); Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships (2010); “Debunking the Myth of the Hard to Reach Parent” (2010); “Title I and Parent Involvement: Lessons from the Past, Recommendations for the Future” (2011); A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform (2011); “Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships” (2014), and “From Private Citizens to Public Actors: The Development of Parent Leaders through Community Organizing” (2015) and “Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher’s Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success” (2017).

Alex Kajitani (Kaw-juw-taw-nee) is the 2009 California Teacher of the Year, and a Top-4 Finalist for National Teacher of the Year. He is the author of several books, including Owning It which was named “Recommended Reading” by the U.S. Department of Education. Alex is also on a mission to get every kid in America to learn their times tables, and to make this happen, he created the popular online program Multiplication Nation.com.

Alex is a highly-sought after keynote speaker who supports and motivates teachers nationwide, and he’s known around the world as “The Rappin’ Mathematician.” Alex has a popular TED Talk, has been honored at The White House, and was featured on The CBS Evening News, where Katie Couric exclaimed, “I LOVE that guy!” For more of his innovative ideas, visit www.AlexKajitani.com.

Maddie Fennell brings extensive experience and passion to her work as an advocate for children and public education.

She is a National Board Certified teacher, the 2007 Nebraska Teacher of the Year, and a 26-year veteran of the classroom who also served as a mentor to her peers as a literary coach.

Maddie spent three years on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Education as a Teacher Leader in Residence in the Office of the Secretary, and as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow.

She also served as a Teacher Fellow for the National Education Association and as Executive Director of the Nebraska State Education Association, supporting over 25,000 educators across the state.

Maddie is currently working as the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Maddie has worked voluntarily in numerous education advocacy roles. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year and the EdTech Evidence Exchange. She Chaired the NEA Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching, presented at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession and at NBC’s Education Nation and served as a teacher representative on the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution Education Reimagined Project and is now on the Education Reimagined Advisory Board. Maddie is also the court appointed educational guardian for a child in foster care.

Maddie earned her undergraduate degree from Creighton University, a Master of Science in Elementary Education and a Certificate in Urban Education from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and an endorsement in assessment from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She was honored in 2007 with the Carol Stowe Humanitarian Award from the National Education Association.

Maddie lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband Bill, their stepson Darek (a special needs adult) her sister Lisa (also a special needs adult) and their dogs Anna and Sharkey; Maddie jokes that they run their own group home!

Dr. Ryan J. Smith serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Community Coalition and supports the policy, advocacy, organizing and powerbuilding efforts for Community Coalition. Founded by Congresswoman Karen Bass, for more than three decades, Community Coalition (CoCo) has been a part of Los Angeles’ political, educational and movement landscape. CoCo was founded intentionally as an African American and Latino organization that is intergenerational in all of its work. The organization has been at the forefront of efforts locally at the school board, city, county, state, and federal levels to advance educational, racial and economic justice.

Prior to joining the Community Coalition, Ryan served as the Chief External Officer for LA Unified’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools overseeing the organization’s development, communications, policy and advocacy, and family and community engagement initiatives. Before that, Ryan served as the Executive Director of the Education Trust-West and Vice President of Strategic Advocacy for the Education Trust, a national education civil rights organization dedicated to closing opportunity gaps. At The Education Trust-West, he worked on producing actionable, accessible research and advocacy tools that reached state policymakers and on-the-ground community advocates and education leaders alike. Ryan also led the team’s development and production of Black Minds Matter: Supporting the Educational Success of Black Students in California, and The Majority Report: Supporting the Educational Success of Latino Students in California. Before Ed Trust, he served as the Director of Education Programs and Policy for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where he was responsible for education program and policy efforts for the organization.

Ryan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from UCLA, and a Doctorate of Education from UCLA. He served as an Annie E. Casey Children and Family Fellow and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond appointed him as a Co-Chair of his Closing the Achievement Gap Initiative.

Fun Fact: Ryan spent a brief period of his career as a teacher in Mexico City, which happens to be his favorite city in the world (after LA, of course). He goes back every year to check on his former students.

With a career spanning over 35 years in education, Jamie is dedicated to positive change and impact in our nation’s education systems.

She began her career as a High School English teacher in the rural Appalachian regions of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, where her passion for empowering students through knowledge and inspiration took root. Jamie’s dedication led her to leadership roles in School and District-level Administration, including Curriculum, Instruction, Data, and Assessment.

She has also served in regional school improvement services with the Ohio Department of Education and as Vice President at Battelle for Kids, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing educational excellence. In her work at Battelle for Kids, she worked closely with Gallup in designing a student voice survey to capture educators’ impact in fostering hope, engagement, and belonging in their students.

As an experienced education consultant and speaker, she has delivered keynotes, workshops, and professional learning for thousands of educators on various topics, including data-informed practices, accountability systems, student voice, vertical progressions in K-12 curricula, formative assessment practices, and the sciences of hope, engagement, and belonging.

She is an experienced keynote speaker at numerous district, state, and national events. Jamie has delivered professional learning sessions at national education conferences, including the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), and the National School Boards Association (NSBA). Since the global pandemic, she has traveled to school districts and conferences in more than 15 states, delivering inspirational messages on the science of hope – and why it matters in education.

Dr. Brian Myli, Senior Vice President, has three decades of experience in public education.

Originally from Iowa, Brian came to the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas in 1994. He spent ten years serving students as a High School Counselor and Counselor Department Chair. In 2004, Brian joined the CCSD Guidance and Counseling Department as a College Counselor Specialist and was later appointed Coordinator of College Readiness Programs and Initiatives.

Brian joined The Public Education Foundation in 2010 to participate in the Executive Leadership Residency. From 2012 to 2021, he served as Vice President of Leadership and Innovation to coordinate all leadership programming for the Leadership Institute of Nevada, an initiative of The Public Education Foundation.

In 2021, Brian retired from the Clark County School District after 30 years of service. He was named Senior Leadership Fellow by the Leadership Institute of Nevada to continue work in leadership programming across the state and region.

Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Arizona State University, a master’s degree in educational counseling psychology from the University of Denver, a Nevada administrative endorsement in educational leadership, and a doctor of education (Ed.D.) degree in educational leadership from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Dr. Michele Robinson has been a school superintendent for 13 years successfully leading districts in Nevada, Massachusetts and New Jersey. She has extensive experience in engaging community partnerships, improving educational outcomes for students, and providing for student and adult social emotional foundations. Michele has engaged community partners to develop employee wellness programs that support the social emotional development of students and the wellbeing of staff caring for children and schools.

Dr. Robinson presents a versatile background that encompasses both the traditional public-school environment and forward-thinking approaches to learning which include the integration of technology and 21st Century learning skills into instructional practices. She developed and founded a successful private K-6 school in Las Vegas, Nevada as well as Odyssey Charter High School, an innovative blended learning charter school. She co-founded the Charter School Association of Nevada, a non-profit organization designed to support new and aspiring charter schools in the state. She was appointed by Nevada’s Governor to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force. She was appointed to serve on the Nevada Department of Education Common Core Standards (CCA) Steering Committee and acted as co-chair for the CCA Communications Committee. Having participated in numerous legislative roundtables and presentations, Michele worked extensively with state and federal legislators advocating for innovation and educational reform in the state. She co-founded the Bergen County Women in Educational Leadership and Bergen County School Support Network designed to provide support, networking, and professional development in social emotional learning for school districts in New Jersey. Michele has spoken nationally and internationally on topics related to educational innovation and reform, and leadership and wellbeing.

​Michele earned her Ed.D from Nova Southeastern University in the area of Educational Leadership in which she gained an expertise in providing quality professional development and onboarding programming to educational professionals and leaders. She holds an M.ED. in Curriculum and Instruction from Lesley University, and a B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Dr. Zhan Okuda-Lim is the Resident Leadership and Policy Fellow and Lead Faculty for Capstone Projects at the Leadership Institute of Nevada. He is concurrently a Postdoctoral Fellow at RAND, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy think tank and research organization. His research interests include K-12 education policy; college and career readiness; local and state education governance; student, community, and educator voices in decision-making; school finance and funding; and the mobilization of cross-sector resources to support schools and communities.

Prior to joining RAND, Zhan served as the Director of Policy and Government Relations at the Clark County Public Education Foundation (PEF) and was a Resident Fellow with the Leadership Institute. In these capacities, he collaborated with cross-sector stakeholders to explore policy priorities for Nevada’s students and guided education, nonprofit, business, and government leaders on researching and addressing problems in education policy and practice, including expanding student access to rigorous courses, improving coaching and feedback mechanisms for educators, and recruiting and supporting educators of color. Previously, he held summer policy experiences with the Clark County School District and engaged in projects to bolster supports for students with disabilities and students in foster care, address disproportionality in exclusionary school discipline, and implement positive behavior interventions and supports.

Born and raised in Nevada and a proud graduate of public schools, Zhan’s interest in education policy and passion for public service was sparked during the Great Recession through significant budget cuts to K-12 education. As Chair of the Nevada Youth Legislature and the CCSD School Board Student Advisory Committee, and as a student council leader and the Student Member on the Nevada State Board of Education, Zhan partnered with and mobilized peers to elevate students’ voices to local and state leaders and advocate for education funding and resources.

Zhan earned a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in Policy Analysis from the RAND School of Public Policy, an M.P.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs.