Diverse Leaders
AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School: AppleTree Early Learning Teacher Residency
Entrepreneur: Jack McCarthy
Nonprofit | Founded: 2017 | Visit the Site
The AppleTree Early Learning Teacher Residency (AELTR) is an innovative approach designed to prepare novice teachers for a career in teaching through hands-on experiences in the classroom while receiving targeted instruction and coaching.
Atlanta Public Schools
Entrepreneur: Wardell Hunter
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
Atlanta Public Schools is one of the largest districts in Georgia, serving more than 52,000 students throughout Atlanta. Our Mission: Through a caring culture of equity, trust, and collaboration, every student will graduate ready for college, career, and life.
Our idea is to completely disrupt our leadership pipeline
program. For the first time ever, we will deeply explore root causes for this challenge and fundamentally revise our process to ensure Black and Latinx males, in particular, are able to advance into instructional leadership roles.Beloved Community: Equity in Schools
Entrepreneur: Rhonda Broussard
Nonprofit | Founded: 2017 | Visit the Site
Beloved Community advocates for and provides capacity-building supports that help communities operationalize and sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments. Key programs include a free, online equity audit, Equity in Schools and Equity at Work cohorts, and deep-dive single institution planning and implementation programming. Beloved Community builds diverse voice in local leadership so that the commitment to regional solutions remains long after any individual charismatic leader, local legislation, or funding stream has gone.
Black Male Educators Alliance of Michigan
Entrepreneur: Curtis Lewis
Nonprofit | Founded: 2017 | Visit the Site
BMEA partners with educational agencies at the local, state and national level to advocate for the support of recruiting black men into education, retaining black male educators, and developing leaders to improve the education of urban youth. BMEA is a group of practitioners invested in the dismantling of institutional impediments to diversity in the educational profession.
Black Men Teach
Entrepreneur: Markus Flynn
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
Black Men Teach (BMT) recruits, prepares, places, and retains Black men in elementary schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota where there is a pressing need for Black male teachers, as currently only 1.4% of teachers are Black and most are working in secondary school settings. BMT provides current and prospective Black male teachers professional development, mentorship, instructional coaching, strategic school placements, and access to a growing community of Black male teachers. They offer participants financial assistance through scholarships and a loan repayment program to address one of the many barriers Black male educators face when entering the field of education. Black Men Teach’s model includes a high school fellowship program focused on identity development and career exploration opportunities for young Black students. They also lead a college fellowship that offers 4 year scholarships, mentorship throughout their college journey, access to emergency funds, student teaching stipends, licensing support, ongoing academic support and strategic school placement that includes two years of instructional coaching.
Black Teacher Project
Entrepreneur: Micia Mosely
Nonprofit | Founded: 2015 | Visit the Site
The Black Teacher Project (BTP) recruits, develops, and sustains Black teachers for schools in the United States. The organization seeks to create an effective teaching force that reflects the diversity of Black people in this country by recruiting future Black teachers, supporting Black teachers to sustain themselves personally and professionally, and conducting research on Black teacher health and sustainability.
Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity (BranchED)
Entrepreneur: Cassandra Herring
Nonprofit | Founded: 2016 | Visit the Site
BranchED supports minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to maximize the quality of their educator preparation programs (EPPs) by providing training, technical assistance, and coaching support – coupled with peer learning and collaborative problem solving.
Cambiar: School Systems Leaders Fellowship
Entrepreneur: Ellen Winn
Nonprofit | Founded: 2012 | Visit the Site
SSLF prepares high-potential education leaders to take on superintendent and cabinet-level roles within three years of completing the fellowship. The fellowship helps participants develop the core skills necessary to become transformational systems leaders through a highly selective and rigorous leadership development program.
Camelback Ventures
Entrepreneur: Aaron Walker
Nonprofit | Founded: 2013 | Visit the Site
Camelback Ventures (CBV) catalyzes gap closing, social ventures led by underrepresented entrepreneurs, particularly people of color. To do this, CBV leads a venture fellowship (Camelback Fellows) that provides coaching, connections and capital to ensure that these ventures are investment-ready.
Capitol Regional Education Council: Teacher Residency Program
Entrepreneur: Dr. Greg Florio
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
The CREC Foundation was established in 2005 to support CREC’s programs, missions and its members. The mission of the CREC Teacher Residency Program is to provide college graduates with an alternate route to elementary certification based on a residency model that focuses on recruiting, preparing, increasing and sustaining minority teachers in elementary schools in the Hartford Region.
Charlotte Bilingual Preschool
Entrepreneur: Banu Valladares
Nonprofit | Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
Charlotte Bilingual Preschool is a Latinx-led, dual language early childhood education provider in Charlotte, NC. They are building a Bilingual Early Childhood Education Workforce Development Program to meet Mecklenburg County’s need for quality, bilingual early childhood teachers and educators. Their program recruits future educators from the local Latinx community with a particular focus on their current students parents and families and provides participants with individualized guidance and tailored pathways to become licensed and credentialed Early Childhood Education teachers.
Charter Board Partners
Entrepreneur: Carrie Irvin
Nonprofit | Founded: 2011 | Visit the Site
Charter Board Partners (CBP) brings new talent into education reform leadership by recruiting individuals to join public charter school boards. CBP connects charter schools with dedicated individuals who bring relevant skills, experience, and leadership capacity. In turn, CBP provides these individuals with a meaningful, skills-based volunteer opportunity, access to training and tools as they join boards, and the opportunity to build their personal and professional networks.
Chicago Public Schools: Lead with CPS
Entrepreneur: Dr. Janice Jackson
Nonprofit | Founded: 2019 | Visit the Site
Launched in 2019, Lead with CPS serves as the umbrella under which leadership development programs will be aligned, eliminating silos between existing programs, and establishing a common vision and goals for creating diverse talent pipelines. Lead with CPS defines what leadership means at every level and provides transparent and equitable access to leadership opportunities that meet the needs of all employees, with a particular focus on recruiting and advancing African American and Latinx employees who are underrepresented among the district’s leadership, especially compared to the demographics of the students they serve. With a core commitment to equity, Lead with CPS aims to strategically recruit and prepare leaders of color and facilitate their advancement within the district.
Chiefs for Change: Future Chiefs
Entrepreneur: Mike Magee
Nonprofit | Founded: 2016 | Visit the Site
Chiefs for Change (CFC) is a nonprofit network of diverse state and district education Chiefs dedicated to preparing all students for today’s world and tomorrow’s. The Future Chiefs program is a 12-month, cohort-based experience in which CFC recruits 8-10 high-potential “Future Chiefs” who are one to two steps removed from obtaining state or district Chief roles, develops them, and helps place them into Chief roles.
Community Equity Partners
Entrepreneur: Erin Trent Johnson
For-profit | Founded: 2016 | Visit the Site
Community Equity Partners’ (CEP) retains, elevates, and sustains senior leaders of color and white allies who are poised and prepared to dismantle the historic and systemic patterns of exclusion within their organization. We also create opportunity for future leaders of color to thrive in the schools and communities they serve. CEP achieves this by disrupting the dominant and exclusive organizational culture through cross-racial relationships and coaching.
CommunityBuild Ventures
Entrepreneur: Natasha & Ayodele Harrison
For-profit | Founded: 2011 | Visit the Site
CommunityBuild Ventures is a pro-Black, solution-focused organization committed to eliminating racial disparities by developing powerful, impactful, and racial equity-driven leaders and organizations. They are launching a new initiative, The Black Male Teacher Innovation (BMTI) Center, a culturally and racially affirming community focused on supporting and retaining Black male teachers in education. The BMTI Center utilizes practices that center healing and self-care, social emotional learning (SEL) competencies for adults, and equity-centered teaching, learning, and leadership.
Disruptive Partners, Intl
Entrepreneur: Anashay Wright
Nonprofit | Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
What happens when Pahara & EDLOC meet historically ignored leaders of color? You get Disruptive Partners. Disruptive Partners (DP) is a Black-owned leadership development firm, committed to developing an exponential number of high-impact leaders at the local level. We identify leaders of color that bring a wide range of diverse talents, skills, and lived experiences critical to influencing real change within the Black community. As your premier executive talent pipeline for racially diverse communities, we create sustainable impact by activating, learning from, and leveraging the untapped power in our communities. We are your Pahara & EDLOC for “The Hood, Which Is My Hood!”
EdFuel
Entrepreneur: Kelly Gleischman
Nonprofit | Founded: 2013 | Visit the Site
EdFuel seeks to attract, develop, and retain the next generation of education reform leaders, with an intentional focus on “beyond the classroom” roles.
Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC)
Entrepreneur: Layla Avila
Nonprofit | Founded: 2015 | Visit the Site
Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) is a membership organization dedicated to elevating the leadership, voices and influence of people of color in education, and to leading more inclusive efforts to improve education.
Education Pioneers: Visiting Fellowship
Entrepreneur: Scott Morgan
Nonprofit | Founded: 2003 | Visit the Site
Education Pioneers (EP) recruits, develops, and connects professionals from diverse backgrounds to solve problems from outside the classroom so students and teachers succeed inside the classroom. The Visiting Fellowship identifies, supports, and retains diverse rising leaders who are already working in education full-time.