Members-at-Large

Ashley Burns Nascimento
Principal Strategist & Founder, Well Positioned

A passionate communications strategist, Ashley focuses on racial and/or gender equity in education, health, housing, economic empowerment, and other social issues. From listening sessions with community matriarchs to focus groups in conservative rural communities, Ashley’s work across the country helps fuel positive change through capacity building, community engagement, and messaging analysis. In short, she helps organizations and coalitions refine their voice to break through “noisy” landscapes and reach ambivalent audiences in unexpected ways. Prior to founding Well Positioned, Ashley led communications and media events for international product launches at Microsoft, Minecraft Education, Skype in the Classroom, LEGO, NASA, and various startups.

Lija Farnham
Partner, The Bridgespan Group

Lija Farnham joined Bridgespan in 2007, and currently serves as a leader in Bridgespan's work in education, early childhood, racial equity, and field building. Her clients include funders, state education authorities, school districts, research centers, collaboratives, and innovative nonprofits. She has worked on a range of issues including strategic planning and decision making, organizational design, structure and processes, performance measurement, and implementation—all with a central focus on inclusion and equity as both outcomes and principles for the process itself.

Taking a cross-sector view, Lija leads Bridgespan's work on field building and equitable systems change. After studying over 30 social change fields, Lija and her co-authors released "Field Building for Population-Level Change: How Funders and Practitioners Can Increase the Odds of Success" in 2020, and "How Philanthropy Can Support Systems-Change Leaders" in 2021.

Building from her education field work related to SEL, student experience, and the science of learning and development, Lija led Bridgespan's "developing many more effective learners" initiative and co-authored "Rethinking How Students Succeed," Stanford Social Innovation Review's most popular article of 2015. She also wrote a follow-on piece: "Helping Teachers Support 'Whole Learners': Going Beyond Academics to Foster Student Success."

Lija serves on the boards of the National Equity Project, Student Experience Research Network, Projects in Education Research That Scale (PERTS), and Reality SF. She grew up in Los Angeles, and studied Public Policy and Studio Art at Stanford University. Outside of work, she loves quality time with her family.

Frank Gettridge
Executive Director, National Public Education Support Fund

Frank L. Gettridge is the President and CEO of the National Public Education Support Fund. NPESF is an organization driven by values of equity through a vision of unity supporting philanthropic networks to advance equitable and racially just policies and systems. NPESF is home to a growing number of funders learning communities and collaboratives that includes the Education Funder Strategy Group (EFSG), the Partnership for the Future of Learning (the Partnership), Grantmakers for Thriving Youth (GTY), Data Funders Collaborative (DFC), and the Global Science of Learning in Education Network (GSoLEN), and formerly the Nerd Herd (which now operates independently of NPESF).

Frank is an educator who has dedicated his career working to improving the lives of the most vulnerable children and families. A New Orleans native, Frank possesses over 30 years of experience in education, with impressive time and variety as an early childhood teacher and administrator, and an elementary and high school teacher and administrator. Prior to NPESF, Frank was a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation where he oversaw the integration of national program strategies and managed a team of officers and support staff to support the Foundation's efforts to address issues of inequality, including creating the conditions that help vulnerable children to achieve. Frank elevated investments focusing on strengthening the teacher-of-color pipeline, transformative family engagement, and closing the 3rd-grade achievement gap.

Earlier in his career, Frank was a dedicated elementary school principal in the Chicago Public Schools. In 2013 when the City of Chicago attempted one of the largest school closing plans in this country's history, it was Frank's leadership and collaboration with the local community and organizations that lead to the successful removal of Clara Barton from the closure list.

Frank holds a doctorate of global education from the University of Southern California, during which time he studied public education systems across three different countries. He holds a master's degree in child development from the Erikson Institute in Chicago, IL, and a bachelor's degree in early childhood education from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, GA. Frank is also an Adjunct Professor for the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education – Global Executive Doctor of Education Programs. Notably, Frank was also selected as a National Head Start Fellow, an Association of Black Foundation Executive's Fellow, a Children's Defense Fund Fellow, and served as a National Association for the Education of Young Children's Governing Board member.

Eric Gordon
Senior Vice-President of Student Development and Education Pipeline, Cuyahoga Community College

Eric Gordon was appointed Senior Vice-President of Student Development and Education Pipeline at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) on July 31, 2023. In this role, Eric serves as a thought partner to the president and trusted advisor to the President's Cabinet. He is responsible for developing and implementing strategies that ensure a seamless transition for students as they move through different stages of education, from early childhood to post-secondary education and beyond. A key focus of Eric's work is identifying and addressing gaps in the current student development and support systems to ensure students have access to the resources and support needed to succeed.

Prior to joining Tri-C, Eric served as the Chief Executive officer of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), a role he held from July 2011 through June 2023. In that role, he was responsible for the leadership and daily management of Cleveland's 35,600 student school district. During his tenure CMSD saw dramatic improvement in academic performance, including a 29-percentage point gain in graduation rates to a record 80.9%.

Among his many awards, CEO Gordon received the Green-Garner Award of the Council of the Great City Schools in 2016, distinguishing him as the top Urban Educator of the Year, the highest national honor for an urban school superintendent. In addition to being named one of Cleveland Magazine's Most Interesting People" early in his tenure as superintendent, Mr. Gordon's active engagement in the Cleveland community has been noted with a number of community awards, including the Diversity Center of Cleveland's Humanitarian Award, Inside Business Magazine's Power 100 Award and Smart Business Magazine's Top 50 Award, which honors the most successful executives in northeast Ohio, the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation's Outstanding Ohio Superintendent Performance Award, and most recently the Mary Utne O'Brien Social Emotional Learning Leader Lifetime Achievement Award from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

Arron Jiron
Philanthropic Advisor

Arron is a champion for equity-focused transformation in public schools and public systems. He advises state agencies, unions, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to change and enhance systems, even massive ones, by designing for human success. Bring people together around whole-child, human-centered approaches to education, early education, expanded learning, juvenile justice, workforce and anti-poverty intervention is a consistent feature of his 25-year career. He started his career at a Community Action Program in Lincoln Nebraska where he learned to fight poverty at a local level by connecting youth and families to resources, supports and education. Working with schools and school leaders, Arron created the Youth Opportunities Center, a two-county workforce development strategy that served thousands of youth and young adults through programs like AmeriCorps, YouthBuild, Restorative Justice, mentoring, youth leadership development, and community building. Continuing his passion for youth development, justice, and community, Arron’s career took him to California where he worked at a state intermediary and advocacy organization, the California School Age Consortium, to advance child-care and after-school policies for low-income communities. As California began increasing investments into whole-child programs—including Proposition 10 in 1998 and Proposition 49 in 2002—Arron learned the ropes of California’s immense education and human serve system, connecting collaboration possibilities and passionate changemakers. He joined the David & Packard Foundations to build and lead grantmaking strategies that focused on field leaders, advocates, and champions for after-school and in early education to advance a whole-child policy agenda. After six years at Packard, Arron joined the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation—a foundation that sought by its founder’s direction to spend down its resources by 2020 in order to have help California push forward on STEM education, environmental literacy, civic learning, and social, emotional, academic learning and development, and educator preparation. During his fifteen years of experience in grantmaking. He designed and led six major grantmaking portfolios at two California’s largest foundations totaling nearly $180 million in grantmaking and $20 million in Program Related Investments. He worked at the front end of major policy implementation efforts the led to policy wins, including the scaling of Transitional Kindergarten.

Gloria Lee
Educator & Entrepreneur

Gloria is an education entrepreneur who has founded and led multiple organizations focused on improving student learning experiences for children farthest from opportunity. Most recently, she founded Educate78 to make grants, lead strategic projects, support educators and encourage family advocacy to improve public education in Oakland, CA. Previously, she was President of NewSchools Venture Fund, overseeing $20M in annual grant-making and mission-related investing. As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, she launched Teaching Channel, a professional development video platform. Gloria also co-founded Yu Ming Charter School (California's first Mandarin immersion charter school and now a National Blue Ribbon school), and charter management organization Aspire Public Schools. She serves on the Boards of the National Equity Project and The Oakland REACH. Gloria started her career with McKinsey & Company. She received her BS in Applied Economics at Cornell University, and MBA and MA in Education at Stanford University, where she also teaches a graduate course on education entrepreneurship.

Gabriela López
Senior Director of Research to Practice, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Gabriela López is the Senior Director of Research to Practice at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. She sets strategic direction and grantmaking for the research to practice body of work. Prior to joining the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, she was the Director of Early Childhood Program Quality Assessment and Equity Implementation for WestEd's Center for Child and Family Studies. Gabriela began her research implementation work as a Senior Research Associate at Education Community Initiatives, an off-campus research office at the University of California, Riverside.

Over her 30 year career, Gabriela led diverse teams in the delivery of high quality services to children, families, and teachers in early childhood and elementary school settings. She developed culturally responsive program quality assessment systems, authored guidance for the PITC PARS (Program Assessment Rating Scale) for infant- toddler serving programs and is a member of the executive leadership team for Grantmakers for Thriving Youth.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Human Development and is a candidate for the Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology from California State University, Long Beach. Gabriela is committed to the development of asset-based measures and practices that represent the values, hopes, and dreams communities hold for themselves. She is a servant leader and walks on this earth in love and purpose toward the mission of reimaging systems of support for children and families.

Sam Seidel
K12 Lab Director of Strategy + Research & Director of Products + Publications, Stanford d.school

Sam Seidel is the K12 Lab Director of Strategy + Research and Director of Products + Publications at the Stanford d.school. Sam is the co-author of Creative Hustle: Blaze Your Own Path and Make Work That Matters, Hip Hop Genius 2.0: Remixing High School Education, and Changing the Conversation About School Safety. He is co-editor of the forthcoming From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Reflections on Race, Culture, and Identity.

David Silver
Director of Workforce, California Volunteers Fund

David Silver has a history of increasing equitable outcomes and opportunities for students from cradle to career. After graduating from UCLA, he became a teacher through Teach for America in Compton and later an educator in Oakland, David served as a school director and program director for Teach for America training the next generation of leaders for educational equity. After earning his Masters from Harvard University, he founded Think College Now, a high-performing, innovative, community public school in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. Serving as the founding principal, David helped lead TCN to unprecedented growth and it became the first school in the Fruitvale to receive a California Distinguished Schools Award.

In 2011, David became the CEO of College Track, a national non-profit organization that empowers students from underserved communities to graduate from college. In 2015, David was appointed by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to become Director of Education and created the Oakland Promise, a cradle to career initiative with the goal of dramatically increasing the number of college graduates from Oakland, in collaboration with the Oakland Unified School District, Education Fund, EBCF, and other community partners. After launching Oakland Promise in the Mayor's office, he helped to sustain the effort by transitioning Oakland Promise to become its own 501c3 non-profit and the inaugural Board of Directors, raising $50M for a generation fund so that every baby and High School senior from a low-income background in Oakland will now be entitled to a $500 college savings account and $4,000 scholarship respectively through 2035. In addition, he helped to write the policy that was approved by the majority of voters to unlock $35M/year for 30 years for cradle to career programming, including ensuring every low-income 3 and 4-year old will be entitled to attend pre-school through 2048.

Currently, he serves as the Director of Workforce for the California Volunteers Fund, which works in close collaboration with California Volunteers, Office of the Governor. The goal is to recruit, deploy and ultimately place diverse participants in living-wage jobs supporting the green economy of the future and to share learnings from LA to impact CA and the nation. He is working in partnership to develop a Service to Jobs Pathways, starting in Los Angeles, with a vision to create a model that could ultimately support the 10,000 CA Volunteers fellows across California to not only serve our community, but also address climate change through green jobs, create the next cadre of diverse teachers across CA, and be on a pathway to a successful future.

Gia Truong, Managing Partner, Equity & Proximity, New Profit

Gia is New Profit's Managing Partner, Equity & Proximity, where she plays a leadership role in championing New Profit's ongoing commitment to developing a strong culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Gia is also a teacher at heart. Throughout her more than two decades in education, she served as a high school social studies teacher, an instructional coach, a middle school principal, a senior leader at Oakland Unified School District, and the CEO of Envision Education.

In her various leadership roles, Gia has learned that to improve outcomes for and with historically marginalized communities: leaders must be willing to do significant "mirror" work and be ready to change; adults need to learn to collaborate productively across difference; and community wisdom and power must be prioritized and amplified.

She is proud to be a Leading for Equity Fellow with the National Equity Project as well as a Pahara Education Fellow, a member of Education Leaders of Color, and a leadership coach with Lead Liberated.