Heather Harding is the Executive Director of the Campaign for Our Shared Future. In pursuing her life’s mission to improve educational opportunities for all children, her career has spanned classroom teaching, professional development, nonprofit management, and empirical research.
Throughout her career, Heather has focused on the intersection between access to high-quality education and racial equity. She believes that respectful collaboration between parents and teachers is an essential tool for helping our kids succeed in life. As a mother of two teenagers, she knows that parents play the role of a child’s first and primary teacher.
Prior to joining COSF, Heather was Senior Director, Education Grantmaking at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies where she oversaw investments that supported the implementation of culturally relevant standards-aligned instruction, advanced excellent teaching, and built educational equity. At Schusterman, she launched the Black Principals Network to curate space for Black principals from across the country in pursuit of community, professional growth, and collective liberation.
Previously, Heather served in senior positions with the Gates Foundation and Teach For America, where she is also an alumna. As Executive Director of EdCORE at George Washington University, she led a research-practice partnership focused on collaboration and translation for building solutions in education.
Heather began her career with Teach for America as a middle school English teacher in rural North Carolina, working with students who lacked reading and writing skills. Her experience working with underprivileged kids to teach them what they need to thrive in school drove her passion for education equity that turned into a career.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in education policy from Harvard University. Her dissertation focused on the practices of successful white teachers in predominantly Black middle schools.