Program Leader

Co-Chair of the Public Education Leadership Project

The Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) aims to increase its intellectual contribution to the field through expanded partnerships among Harvard faculty, doctoral students and the field. With its core focus on strategic decision making in large urban school systems, PELP offers an extraordinary opportunity to develop new knowledge that extends Harvard’s intellectual contribution to the field across schools and disciplines, expands the connection to useful knowledge by its doctoral programs and students, and influences the work of the largest school systems in the country, with implications for public education as a whole.

Chair of the Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader

Powerful forces—changing demographics, new technologies, and partisan politics—are reshaping what school systems can be. These shifts call on local superintendents, their boards, and their teams to lead with political acumen as well as instructional and operational expertise. When superintendents are supported to meet this moment, they can deepen trust, expand opportunity, and strengthen our democracy through public education.

The Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader (ISCL) is transforming how superintendents and their teams and boards are prepared and supported so they can steward the future of public education with civic imagination, democratic purpose, and political skill.