Deborah Meier
Deborah Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, administrator, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. Between 1992-96, she also served as co-director of Coalition Campus Project, which successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools. From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School, a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 220 children. In 1987, Debbie was the first educator to receive a McArthur “Genius” Award. She currently blogs for Ed Week (
Bridging Differences).
Sourabh Sen
Sourabh Sen is Co-Chairman of Astonfield, a leading provider of renewable energy in emerging markets. Sourabh oversees all government relations and lobbying efforts and provides macro-level operational and strategic guidance to Astonfield’s Global Executive Committee. Prior to co-founding Astonfield in 2005, he served as Executive Vice President of National Life Insurance Company until 2008 and Executive Vice President of First Investors Corporation from 1999 to 2005. Sourabh has extensive global expertise in asset management, cross border investments, strategic acquisitions and working with national governments on asset privatizations.
Zac Zeitlin
Zac is a member of the Connecticut Board of Regents for Higher Education and sits on the boards of Domus and Big Picture Learning. Zac is a former partner of Silver Point Capital, where he ran the firm's Principal Finance business. He previously worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and TPG Capital. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas.
Blair Miller
Blair Miller is the Vice President of the MDG Health Alliance, a start-up coalition of leading philanthropists focused on using private sector solutions to address the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. Previous to MDG Health Alliance, Blair spent five years at Acumen Fund, a $90M non-profit venture capital fund that invests in enterprises that serve the poor in India, Pakistan, and West and East Africa. Prior to Acumen Fund, she worked in micro health insurance in India and helped develop a fund to invest in small and medium size enterprises in Central America. Blair serves on the Executive Board of Venture for America and the Alumni board of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She is an African Leadership Network Fellow and an Aspen Ideas Festival scholar. Blair holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia where she was a varsity volleyball player.
Nancy Cardwell, Ed.M
Nancy M. Cardwell is a former member of the graduate faculty at Bank Street College of Education where she was an advisor and taught child development, educational advocacy and research methods for educational change. Currently, she is completing her Ph.D. in Social Personality Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York where she is also an Adjunct Lecturer on Early Childhood Education. Nancy is an education consultant and provides on-site professional development to schools, colleges and universities to improve children’s learning informed by recent findings from brain research. Her dissertation research explores the intersection of social development and social justice in novice teachers' views about their work with children in public, charter and private school settings. In her 25 years of education experience, Nancy has planned and conducted many interactive professional development experiences in urban, suburban and rural communities with educators (pre-kindergarten through 12th grade), cultural institutions and parents in Massachusetts, New York and South Africa. She is currently writing a book on applied child development theory and cognitive neuroscience for teachers, administrators and policy makers. Prior to joining the Bank Street College faculty, Nancy was a classroom teacher in central Harlem and a graduate student and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Hayin Kim, Ph.D.
Hayin Kim is the Director of Community Schools for the San Francisco Unified School District. Previous to joining SFUSD, Hayin worked with the City of Emeryville on developing a joint-use pre-K-12 community school partnership — the Emeryville Center of Community Life. Hayin is a trained educational researcher and evaluator, with a focus on community based programs and partnerships that support healthy development of youth and their communities. While at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, she co-facilitated the evaluation of multiple community and school-based project initiatives with an emphasis on collaborative, theory-based, qualitative research methods that engaged community partners in San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Francisco counties. Previously, Hayin has worked at the Coalition for Community Schools and the Children's Aid Society's Community Schools initiative. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University School of Education.
Mitch Weathers
Mitch Weathers is Chair of the Science Department at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California and the Creator and Executive Director of Organized Binder. He is an adjunct professor in the School of Education at Dominican University of California. Mitch also collaborates with Stanford University, California public schools and teacher support programs across the country in how to integrate Organized Binder into their classrooms. Mitch is an education technology enthusiast who advises EdTech start-ups in the Silicon Valley.
Robert Gibralter
Robert has been a marketing strategist for over 30 years. He has worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, building brands including m&m's, Singapore Airlines, Heineken, and Avon. After running advertising agencies, Robert taught marketing at Columbia University and advised both start-up and corporate clients in strategy, design, and communications. Throughout his career, he has devoted time to developing internship and training programs, mentoring over 200 interns and lecturing at universities, including Nanyang Tech and NUS in Singapore, Amherst College and Goskino Institute in Moscow. Robert has also mentored and coached teenagers for over ten years through StreetSquash, a Harlem-based non-profit. He grew up in New York, and earned his BA at Amherst College and MBA at Columbia University in marketing and international business.
Eliza Spang, Ph.D.
Eliza is the Learning Design Strategist at Institute of Play, an organization focused on designing experiences that integrate elements of games to make learning irresistible. Eliza is responsible for the long-term advancement of the game-like integrated learning model pioneered by the Institute — its continued evolution in existing learning contexts and its expansion and adaptation in new contexts. Eliza has over 13 years of experience in education, as a high school science teacher, teacher educator, educational consultant and researcher in New York, Massachusetts and California. She presents at national conferences regularly and was an adjunct professor at Hunter College. She holds a PhD in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford University School of Education and a MAT in Secondary Biology from Duke University. She and her fiance live in Brooklyn with their dog.