Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) board of trustees is comprised of individuals who, based on their knowledge and experience, make valuable contributions to our overall conduct. EPE’s current trustees are K-12 and media community members that have demonstrated passion and expertise that aligns with our nonprofit mission. The board regularly meets to review EPE’s practices and reviews the performance of its portfolio of sub-brands, Education Week, EdWeek Top School Jobs, and EdWeek Market Brief. Each member’s unique voice guides strategy and provides oversight and accountability for our organization’s actions.
Aggie Alvez, Vice Chair
Aggie Alvez is a seasoned communications, marketing, and community engagement consultant with more than 30 years’ experience working in leadership positions in the corporate, public education, and nonprofit sectors. She served as Vice President of Marketing for Discovery Education and led strategic communications and community engagement for both the Houston Independent School District in Texas and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland.
In an earlier role in Montgomery County Public Schools, Alvez oversaw compliance with federal nondiscrimination laws and diversity initiatives. Prior to that, she served as director of public affairs for a nonprofit organization, Street Law, Inc., adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School in the Street Law prison program, a television news writer and field producer, and a high school social studies teacher.
Alvez is active in the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Awards program and has served on the ABA’s Public Service Committee. In her volunteer capacity, she teaches ESL for adults, acts in local theatre, and produces radio theatre programs for a community radio station.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Alvez earned a law degree from the University of Baltimore and was admitted to the Maryland Bar.
Celine Coggins
Celine is a successful social entrepreneur, nonprofit and philanthropic leader, author, educator, and speaker. She is the inaugural CEO of The Goodness Web (TGW), a collaborative fund aimed at transforming youth mental health. Prior to TGW, she led Grantmakers for Education. Celine was also the founder of Teach Plus, an advocacy network for teachers, and she led that organization for over a decade growing it from an idea to a community of 30,000 teachers and 65 staff across 12 states. The common denominator in all of her leadership has been building networks that harness the power of individuals for the collective good. She was honored at the White House by President Obama for her leadership in education, and the subject of a Harvard Business School case.
Celine earned her Ph.D. From Stanford University. For the past 7 years, she has held an appointment as an Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard University Innovation Labs, and spent 2017-2020 teaching policy and leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has published three books and dozens of articles in journals and in the media.
Peter Cohen, Treasurer
Peter Cohen is a recently retired senior executive who has held leadership positions across multiple education businesses spanning Pre K through adult learning. He now serves as a board member to five PreK-12 grade education companies, and as a Senior Advisor for Boston Consulting Group.
From 2017 until 2022, Cohen was the President of University of Phoenix, one of the largest adult-serving online universities in the country, where he focused on their commitment to improved graduation rates and increased career services for their adult students. Prior to that, from 2013 to 2017, he was the Group President for North America at McGraw-Hill Education. There, Cohen led the learning services and curriculum for both K-12 and higher education, following their purchase by Apollo Global Management. He was previously the CEO for Pearson’s K-12 curriculum and charter school business from 2008 to 2013, where he led the expansion of digital curriculum and services. Cohen began his education career at Sylvan Learning, the leading tutoring business in the USA, where he was the President and CEO for Sylvan and Educate Inc. from 1996 to 2008.
Before serving in leadership roles in the education industry, Cohen was a senior executive at multiple consumer service businesses, ranging from start-ups to large-scale chains.
He earned a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Redlands, Johnston College.
Susan Enfield, Advisor
Susan Enfield most recently served as the Superintendent for the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada. Previously, Enfield spent 10 years as the Superintendent of Highline Public Schools in Burien, Wash. Under Dr. Enfield’s leadership, Highline implemented a bold strategic plan committed to ensuring that students graduate bilingual, biliterate with the problem-solving and critical thinking skills that will prepare them for the future they choose.
A former high school English, journalism, and English-Language Learner (ELL) teacher, Enfield served as Chief Academic Officer and then as Interim Superintendent for Seattle Public Schools before coming to Highline in 2012. She previously held leadership positions in Evergreen Public Schools (Vancouver, Wash.), Portland Public Schools, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Enfield is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and earned master’s degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University. She also holds a doctoral degree in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard’s Urban Superintendents Program.
Jess Gartner
Jess Gartner is the Group Vice President of the Resource Planning Cloud at PowerSchool. She is formerly the CEO & Founder of Allovue, an education technology company that empowers K-12 educators to strategically and equitably allocate financial resources. PowerSchool acquired Allovue in 2024 to expand their financial management, analytics, and workflow capabilities.
Gartner has been featured as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Education, Baltimore Sun’s Women to Watch, The Tech Edvocate’s Trailblazers in Edtech, and Baltimore Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. She was recognized as a Maryland SmartCEO Innovator of the Year and received the Johns Hopkins Outstanding Alumni Award and the Maryland TEDCO Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Prior to founding Allovue, Gartner studied education policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated magna cum laude. She received her M.A. in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University. She serves on the boards of Teach for America and EdWeek, and formerly served on the National Advisory Council of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.
LaTonya Goffney
Dr. LaTonya M. Goffney began her career as an eighth-grade language arts teacher. She served as superintendent for Coldspring-Oakhurst CISD and Lufkin ISD before becoming Superintendent of Aldine ISD.
She is active in the Texas School Alliance, the Texas Association of Black School Educators, the Texas Council of Women School Executives, the Texas Association of School Administrators, Chiefs for Change, the National Alliance of Black School Educators, and the Texas Urban Council of Superintendents. Dr. Goffney was named President-Elect of the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) in 2021 and was sworn in as President in December 2023.
Awards include TASB Superintendent of the Year (2017), a 2020 AASA Superintendent Award finalist, and the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents’ 2021 National Champions of Equity Award.
She holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and a doctorate from Sam Houston State University.
Raymond C. Hart
Raymond C. Hart, Ph.D., is an impact-driven advocate for improving student achievement, policy governance, and system operations at all levels of education. He employs a unique combination of expertise as an Industrial Engineer, researcher, and educator, which has honed his ability to find solutions to complex problems and think strategically. Hart’s career has been focused on connecting the dots between people, data-driven strategies, and student outcomes. He has been a champion for urban school districts with members of Congress, the U. S. Department of Education, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and many other national, state, and philanthropic organizations.
Ray is currently the Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools where he serves as a multi-disciplinary leader to impact change for the Council’s 78-member districts. Hart leads dynamic team which works collaboratively across divisions academics, management and operations, communications, and legislation on behalf of the nation’s urban school systems. At the Council, Ray launched the Academic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and managed the Males of Color Initiative which resulted in a partnership with President Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program. He directs strategic support teams in academics, finance, information technology, and other district operational areas across the country to improve outcomes and efficiencies. He has authored reports that led to improvements in district, state, and national assessment practices; influenced the creation of offices that focus on equity and improving outcomes for young men and women of color; and highlighted the success of member districts in turning around their lowest performing schools.
Prior to joining the Council, Hart was a Fellow at ICF International where he led the Analytic Technical Support Task Force for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory (REL). His role focused heavily on strengthening administrator and teacher effectiveness throughout districts in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. Hart previously served as an executive director for the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) where he led the redesign of the research and assessment division. He also oversaw the district’s Title I, Race to the Top, and grant programs such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Effective Teacher in Every Classroom initiative. Prior to APS, Hart worked as an independent consultant following a series of academic and director-level roles at four different universities.
Ray earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in research, measurement, and statistics at Kent State University, Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction at Cleveland State University, and Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A native of Dallas, Ray and his wife have four children and currently reside in Ashburn, VA.
John H. Jackson
Dr. John H. Jackson is President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. In this role, Dr. Jackson leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a fair and substantive opportunity to learn for all students regardless of race or gender. Dr. Jackson joined the Schott Foundation after serving in several senior level positions. Among them, National Director of Education and Chief Policy Officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 2000-2007. In 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton appointed Dr. Jackson to serve as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Jackson has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Race, Gender, and Public Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Earlier in his career, Dr. Jackson conducted extensive research at the Harvard Civil Rights Project on civil rights and opportunity gap issues.
Dr. Jackson has been elected or appointed to serve on many boards and commissions. Among them the Xavier University of Louisiana Board of Directors, Nellie Mae Education Foundation Board of Directors, Harvard University Board of Alumni, Association of Black Foundation Executives, American Bar Association At-Risk Commission. Dr. Jackson also served on the Obama-Biden transition team as a member of the President’s 13-member Education Policy Transition Work Group.
A native of the Southside of Chicago and product of the public school system, Dr. Jackson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Xavier University of Louisiana; A Master of Education in Education Policy from the University of Illinois’ College of Education; and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois’ College of Law. In addition, Dr. Jackson received a Master of Education and Doctorate of Education in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Shawn Mahoney, Chair
Shawn Mahoney is a highly-effective executive with proven success creating value and leading high-performing teams in the public sector and in private equity industry. At present, Dr. Mahoney serves as the Chief Customer Officer for Edmentum.
After starting her career as a bilingual math and language arts teacher, Mahoney served as the VP of Product Research for North America at Pearson, the SVP of Product Development and Chief Learning Officer for McGraw-Hill Education K-12 Schools, and the Chief Product and Learning Officer at Illuminate Education. Shawn was recruited to lead the strategic design, development, and global implementation of an early-career cloud seller and future leader university for the Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services.
In recognition for her exceptional contributions to business impact, Shawn was awarded the AWS MVP Leader’s Choice Award for 2022 in Shared Services and Business Operations for the Worldwide Public Sector. She was the recipient of the Intellectual Contribution and Faculty Tribute Award for the Technology, Innovation, and Education cohort at The Harvard Graduate School of Education, and was named one of the Faces of Change by Insight Partners.
Dr. Mahoney holds a B.A. in Secondary Education, an M.A. in Bilingual Education, an M.A. Ed. from The Harvard Graduate School of Education in Technology, Innovation, and Education, and a Ph.D. in Educational Technology from Arizona State University. Shawn is a Certified Cloud Practitioner with Amazon Web Services.
Kavitha Mediratta, Secretary
Kavitha Mediratta has decades of experience leading and supporting campaigns to advance racial and educational equity in the United States. As partner and strategist of Mediratta Smith Consulting, she helps organizations and foundations to plan and assess their strategies; develop large-scale initiatives; strengthen leadership and organizational practices; and distill lessons and share their stories for greater impact.
Kavitha is the founder and former executive director of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity to build cross-sectoral networks of leaders in the US and South Africa. She served previously as chief strategy advisor at the Atlantic Philanthropies, leading its racial equity grantmaking and work to confront the school-to-prison pipeline. She began her career as a classroom teacher and developed programs in youth, community and parent organizing and applied research at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform of Brown University and the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University.
Kavitha is the recipient of the Schott Foundation’s philanthropy changemaker award and Rockefeller Foundation’s Warren Weaver fellowship. She holds a B.A. from Amherst College, an M.Ed. from Columbia University’s Teachers College, and a Ph.D. from New York University. She has served on the boards and advisory groups of several prominent organizations, including Race Forward and Partners for Dignity and Rights, two leading organizations on racial justice and human rights in the US.
Lesley Norman
Executive producer Lesley Norman is an experienced public television executive whose recent executive producer credits for WNET include Groundbreakers, My Grandparents’ War; Inside The Met; Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten; and Boss: The Black Experience In Business.
Prior to her work at WNET, she served as the Senior Producer for the Peabody Award-winning PBS series 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School. She was Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative, and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of JumpStart Productions. While at JumpStart, she was the Executive in Charge of the award-winning PBS series NOW. Norman also served as Vice President and Production Executive of David Grubin Productions and worked on award-winning productions such as The Secret Life of the Brain, Napoleon and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided.
She has worked at WGBH, Blackside Productions and as an independent producer. Norman has received numerous honors for creative achievement, including three Emmy Awards for her work on NOW and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club for her senior producing role on the film Child Brides, Stolen Lives.
Jeff Perkins
Jeff Perkins leads the Washington, D.C., office of executive search and consulting firm Stanton Chase. As Managing Director, he serves clients in aerospace, technology, digital, and media, with a primary focus on C-suite and board searches.
Throughout his career, Perkins has held leadership positions in North America and Europe for major media, digital, and technology organizations, including: SpaceX, NPR, News Corporation, Nielsen, and Time Warner. In these roles, he guided diverse teams in human resources, executive search and compensation, culture development, and organizational transformation.
Perkins holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Wabash College, a Master of Science in organization development from American University, and an MBA from Georgetown University. He serves on the Boards of Trustees for Wabash College and Education Week.
Julia Rafal-Baer
Julia Rafal-Baer, Ph.D., has dedicated her career to helping all children achieve their potential. After beginning her career as a special education teacher in the Bronx two decades ago, Dr. Rafal-Baer is now a top education advisor who leads high-performance, high-impact organizations nationwide. She is a trusted confidante to the nation’s most effective state education leaders and superintendents, directly coaching more than 60 leaders into the superintendent and state commissioner roles, 80 percent are leaders of color and 60 percent are women. Dr. Rafal-Baer frequently speaks and writes on the need to advance more women leaders in senior roles.
Dr. Rafal-Baer is the co-founder and CEO of ILO Group, a women-founded, leadership-focused education policy and strategy firm. She is also the founder and CEO of Women Leading Ed, a national network of women education leaders, and a co-founder and partner at The Forum for Educational Leadership. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Rafal-Baer served as a top education advisor to school districts and state education agencies across the country and as an expert advisor to the COVID Collaborative. She also supported a national effort during the pandemic to safely reopen schools, accelerate learning, and strengthen critical support for students.
Previously, Dr. Rafal-Baer served as Chief Operating Officer at Chiefs for Change, a nationwide network of district and state education leaders. She built the organization from a start-up to a high-impact nonprofit, raising over $110M in philanthropic funds, and developing core programming and initiatives, including the Future Chiefs and Women in Leadership program. She provided intensive technical assistance, direct systems support, coaching, and strategic advising support to state and district leaders and their leadership teams across the nation on topics including strategic planning, policy changes, finance and operations, equity initiatives, school improvement, human capital, crisis management, and organizational development.
Dr. Rafal-Baer served as Assistant Commissioner of the New York State Education Department under Commissioner John B. King, Jr, where she was responsible for the strategy, management, and implementation of teacher and leader initiatives, overseeing more than $150M in federal funds. She currently sits on the national board for the Association of Marshall Scholars, Education Week, and Spring Board Collaborative; and the advisory committee for the Center for Education Policy and Research at Harvard University. In 2020, Dr. Rafal-Baer was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Education to a four-year term to the National Assessment Governing Board. In 2022 she was named a Pahara Fellow.
Dr. Rafal-Baer graduated summa cum laude from the George Washington University with a B.A. in Psychology and holds a dual M.S. from CUNY: Lehman College in Special Education and Childhood Education. She also holds a Master of Philosophy in Education Research, and a Ph.D. focused on comparative education policy from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Marshall Scholar.
Jerry Weast, Advisor
Jerry D. Weast is a 35-year veteran of education leadership. Dr. Weast led Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools—16th largest school district in the nation—to achieve both the highest graduation rate among the nation’s largest school districts for four consecutive years and the highest academic performance ever in MCPS. He achieved this at a time when the non-English speaking student population more than doubled and enrollment tipped toward low socioeconomic demographics.
During Dr. Weast’s tenure, Montgomery County Public Schools was a 2010 winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for management excellence and a 2010 finalist for the Broad Prize in Urban Education. His groundbreaking approaches to improving public education are the subjects of case studies by the Harvard Business School, The Pew Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Panasonic Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Weast has published in professional journals including Phi Delta Kappan and has authored a chapter on the Achievement Gap for the book Improving the Odds for America’s Children: Future Directions for Policy and Practice, acknowledging the 40th anniversary of the Children’s Defense Fund.
Dr. Weast was named superintendent of the year in two states. He has twice been awarded North Carolina’s highest honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, for his work on behalf of the state’s children. He was recognized by the Yale School of Child Development for his support of initiatives in early learning and has received the C. Jackson Grayson Award for managerial excellence, as well as awards from the Schott Foundation and the American Educational Research Association for leadership in developing strategies leading to improved student achievement across all racial and socioeconomic groups. Weast has been named a Washingtonian of the Year and is a recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of School Administrators, the organization’s highest honor.
Weast has served on the boards of policy, educational, business, and community organizations including the Peabody College (Vanderbilt University) National Ed.D. Advisory Board and the Junior Achievement Worldwide Education Group; and as a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development. Currently he is a board member of the Institute for Educational Leadership, and he also serves on the National Education Foundation Senior Fellows Advisory Group, the Opportunity to Learn Advisory Board (Schott Foundation for Public Education), the National Advisory Board of the P3 Leadership Institute at the University of Washington, and advisory boards of America Achieves, TeachersConnect, and the Principal’s Exchange through its partnership with THINK Together.
In furtherance of his work in educational leadership development, Dr. Weast is founder and president of the Partnership for Deliberate Excellence, LLC, through which he is working with school districts and foundations across the country to improve the quality of public education. He has presented extensively in the U.S. and internationally, including at the European Council of International Schools and through Fulbright-funded travel to Northern Ireland to consult on school integration. He has twice been invited to the People’s Republic of China, has spoken to educators in Near and Middle Eastern countries, and was a guest of Japan’s Ministry of Education, speaking on the topic of school reform. Weast holds an Ed.D. in Educational Administration from Oklahoma State University, where he was named to the College of Education Hall of Fame.
Ellen Weiss
Ellen Weiss is an award-winning journalist and leader with more than 40 years experience working in audio, video and digital newsrooms. Most recently, as Washington Bureau Chief and Vice President at The E. W. Scripps Company, she created a multimedia national investigative team and launched podcasting for the company. While there, she received her forth Peabody Award for the “Under the Radar” investigative series and the RFK’s Journalism Grand Prize for the investigative documentary “A Broken Trust,” a project highlighting the lack of justice for survivors of sexual assault on tribal lands.
Prior to that she spent nearly 30 years at NPR and served as Senior Vice President of News. In that role, she oversaw global expansion of NPR News, the creation of award-winning programs, an investigative unit, podcasts and the digital integration of the newsroom.
Weiss is a graduate of Smith College with a B.A. in international relations. She and her family live in Washington, D.C.
The Trustees of Editorial Projects in Education owe a duty of loyalty to the organization, which requires that in serving EPE they act, not in their personal interests or in the interests of others, but rather solely in the interests of EPE. Trustees must have undivided allegiance to EPE’s mission and may not use their positions as Trustees, information they have about EPE, or EPE’s property in a manner that allows them to secure a pecuniary benefit for themselves or their relatives. The conduct of personal business between any Trustee and EPE is prohibited.
Business transactions between a Trustee and EPE in which a Trustee has an interest shall not be prohibited, but they shall be subject to close scrutiny. Such proposed transactions shall be reviewed carefully to determine that they are in the best interests of EPE and that they will not lead to a conflict of interest. For the purposes of this policy, a Trustee has an interest in a proposed transaction if he/she has a financial interest in it or holds a position as trustee, director, general manager, or principal officer in any such organization.
Trustees are expected to make full disclosure to the best of their knowledge of any dual interest in a proposed transaction by submitting a report to the President or other officer designated by the Board to handle such matters, supplying any reasons why the transaction might not be in the best interest of EPE. In matters requiring prior approval of the Board of Trustees, the Chairman or other officer shall forward copies of this disclosure report to the Board before its approval.
A Trustee with a dual interest in a proposed transaction shall not vote on the matter and, depending upon the circumstances, may be excluded from any discussion of the matter.
A Trustee shall not use inside information of EPE for his/her personal benefit. Nor shall a Trustee use such inside information or his/her position as a Trustee to the detriment of EPE, including participation with outside organizations or businesses. Inside information is information obtained through the Trustee’s position that has not become public information.
Each Trustee has a duty to place the interests of EPE foremost in any dealings involving the organization and has a continuing responsibility to comply with the requirements of this Policy. On an annual basis, each Trustee is required to complete a Trustee Disclosure Statement.
Please initial in the space at the end of Item A or complete Item B, whichever is appropriate; complete Item C; and sign and date the statement and return it to the board chair.
A. I am not aware of any relationship or interest or situation involving my family or myself which might result in, or give the appearance of being, a conflict of interest between such family member or me on one hand and EPE on the other. ______
B. The following are relationships, interests, or situations involving me or a member of my family that I consider might result in or appear to be an actual, apparent, or potential conflict of interest between such family members or myself on one hand and EPE on the other.
- For-profit corporate directorships or employment:
- Non-profit trusteeships or employment:
- Memberships in the following organizations:
- Contracts, business activities, and investments with or in the following organizations:
- Other relationships and activities:
C. My primary business or occupation is: ______________________________________
I have read and understand EPE’s conflict-of-interest policy and agree to be bound by it. I will promptly inform the board chair of EPE of any material change that develops in the information contained in the foregoing statement.
Type/print Name ____________________________
Signature ______________________
Date __________________
