AISR: Board of Overseers

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Board of Overseers

The Board of Overseers — made up of corporate, foundation, academic, and public-school representatives with a strong interest in education reform — promotes the Institute’s work and from time to time decides on its future direction.

The University Corporation appoints members to a Board of Overseers, to which the Institute is accountable. The President of the University serves ex officio as chair of the Board.

BOARD MEMBERS	BIOGRAPHIES
Chair ex officio Ruth J. Simmons President, Brown University	Dr. Simmons is the president of Brown University and former president of Smith College. She began her academic career at the University of New Orleans and moved to California State University in Northridge in 1977 as visiting associate professor of pan-African studies and acting director of international programs. From 1979 to 1983, she was assistant and later associate dean of graduate studies at the University of Southern California. Between 1983 and 1995, she held positions as director of Afro-American studies, associate dean of the faculty, and vice provost at Princeton University and spent two years as provost at Spelman College in Atlanta.
Bernicestine McLeod Bailey President, McLeod Associates, Inc.	Bernicestine McLeod Bailey is president of McLeod Associates, Inc., an information technology consulting firm that specializes in performance management and business intelligence software applications. For twelve years prior to forming McLeod Associates in 1981, she was a systems engineer at IBM. She is also currently involved in building a family gift and toy business.
Larry Berger Co-Founder and CEO, Wireless Generation	Larry Berger is CEO and co-founder of Wireless Generation, a company that helps PreK-12 educators to teach smarter through the sensitive and innovative application of technology in the classroom. Under his leadership, the company has developed handheld computer software that makes formative assessment instructionally useful to teachers, next generation curriculum customized throughout the school year to students’ needs, and large-scale data systems that centralize student information and integrate knowledge management tools to spur teacher collaborations. Berger was a Rhodes Scholar and a White House Fellow working on educational technology at NASA. He serves on the Carnegie-Institute for Advanced Study Joint Commission on Mathematics and Science Education, and on the Board of Trustees for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Jay Ogilvy Faculty, Presidio School of Management	Jay Ogilvy is dean and chief academic officer of the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. He also co-teaches Presidio's strategic management course and teaches in its executive program. Previously, he was senior partner and training-program chair of the Global Business Network (GBN), which he co-founded. At GBN, he led strategic planning for Fortune 500 companies based on alternative scenarios and intelligence about the global social, economic, and political environment. He has also held positions as a senior social scientist at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) and director of research for SRI's Values and Lifestyles Program. He has taught at Williams College, the University of Texas, and Yale University and is the author of numerous articles, reviews and books, including Creating Better Futures, Living without a Goal, and China’s Futures. He received a PhD and MA in philosophy from Yale University and a BA from Williams College.
Hilary C. Pennington Director, Special Initiatives Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation	Hilary Pennington is Director of Special Initiatives at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Pennington most recently served as a Senior Fellow at the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress and vice-chair of Jobs for the Future (JFF), a research and policy development organization on workforce development and future work requirements she co-founded. Before that, she worked in corporate strategy and public policy at Aetna and at the Boston Consulting Group. She advised the first Bush and the Clinton administrations on workforce and education policies and worked with the secretaries of labor and education to design the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act. A graduate of the Yale School of Management and Yale College, she holds a graduate degree in Social Anthropology from Oxford University. Her writings have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the Christian Science monitor, and the Boston Globe. She serves on the Institute's Program Advisory Group.
Wendy Puriefoy President, Public Education Network	Wendy D. Puriefoy is president of the Public Education Network (PEN), the nation's largest network of community-based school reform organizations, where she has helped establish numerous foundations and systemic reform initiatives. She graduated from William Smith College and holds master's degrees from Boston University in African American Studies, in American Studies, and in American Colonial History. Prior to joining PEN, she worked on the desegregation of the Boston public school system and was executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Boston Foundation, a community endowment supporting programs in public health and welfare, education, culture, environment, and housing.
Barbara Reisman Executive Director, The Schumann Fund	Barbara Reisman has been executive director of The Schumann Fund for New Jersey since 1997. The Schumann Fund makes program and policy grants in New Jersey to support early childhood care and education, environmental protection, and school innovation. From 1986 to 1997, she was executive director of the Child Care Action Campaign (CCAC), a national organization working to improve child care and early childhood education. She is the author of numerous articles and publications on childcare policy. Prior to joining CCAC, she was the director of finance and administration at the Environmental Defense Fund. She is a trustee emerita of Brown University and serves as the vice president and public policy cochair for the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families (GCYF).
Ralph Smith Senior Vice President, Annie E. Casey Foundation	Ralph Smith joined the Casey Foundation in 1994 as director of planning and development and, in that capacity, helped design the Foundation's Neighborhood Transformation and Family Development initiative to help communities improve outcomes for children by strengthening families and neighborhoods. He was a member of the University of Pennsylvania law faculty from 1975 to 1997 and is a nationally recognized legal scholar and attorney, authoring briefs in landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. During that time he also served in senior leadership positions for the School District of Philadelphia, including chief of staff and chief operating officer. In the early 1990s, he was a key advisor to the mayor of Philadelphia on children and family policy development and was the founding director of the National Center on Fathers and Families and the Philadelphia Children’s Network.
Robin Steans Trustee, Steans Family Foundation	Robin Steans’s primary focus at the Steans Family Foundation is education. She is a trustee of National-Louis University, a director of the Chicago Metro History Education Center, and a member of Chicago's Philanthropy Roundtable and of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. She has made significant personal gifts to Chicago Communities in Schools, Northwestern University School of Communication, Perspectives Charter School, Scholarship Chicago, and University of Chicago Hospitals. A 1986 graduate of Brown University, she received an A.B. magna cum laude in history and Russian studies.

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