#reinventingschool

Dr. Veronica C. Garcia, Superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, has extensive experience working in the policy arena in various capacities, including serving as Executive Director for NM Voices for Children, Executive Director of the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators, and New Mexico’s first Cabinet Secretary of Education. As Cabinet Secretary of Education, she advocated for the passage of many educational reforms including the state’s Pre-K Act, Hispanic Education Act, programs that extend the school year for at-risk children (K-3 Plus), and rigorous academic standards that were recognized nationally. She also pushed for a comprehensive approach to educational reform by advocating for increased funding for programs such as school-based health clinics, breakfast in the schools, and elementary physical education. Under her leadership, New Mexico garnered top rankings for school reform, accountability systems, increased teacher quality, data quality, health and wellness policies, parental involvement, and college and career readiness.

Prior to becoming the interim superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, Dr. Garcia served as the Executive Director of New Mexico Voices for Children, a state children’s advocacy organization that champions policies meant to improve child well-being in the areas of education, health, family economic security, and racial and ethnic equity. During her time as executive director of NM Voices for Children, she fully integrated the organization’s two major work areas—the KIDS COUNT program and the Fiscal Policy Project—which resulted in the creation of the NM KIDS are COUNTing on Us policy campaign, a blueprint for improving child well-being. Her decades of work within the state’s K-12 education system have also included teaching in the classroom, serving as principal and regional superintendent in the Albuquerque Public Schools, and serving as associate superintendent and superintendent of the Santa Fe Public Schools. As the Superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools from 1999-2002, the District transformed a $2.6 million deficit into a $2.4 million cash balance.

Matt Dunne is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center on Rural Innovation. He served 11 years in the Vermont House and Senate, enacting the state’s first broadband grants, brownfields revitalization funding, and downtown redevelopment program. He helped grow a VT-based software company to over 100 people and was Associate Director of the Rockefeller Center on Public Policy at Dartmouth College. In 1999 Matt was appointed director of AmeriCorps*VISTA under President Clinton, where he led PowerUp, one of the first national efforts to bridge the digital divide, and launched an Entrepreneur Corps to focus on micro-finance in high-need communities. In 2007, he started Google’s Community Affairs division out of a former bread factory in White River Jct, VT, where he led all local US philanthropy and engagement, including the Google Fiber rollout and orchestrating educational and development initiatives in Google’s data center communities across rural America. Matt has a BA from Brown University, and also held an appointment at the MIT Media Lab. He is a lifelong Vermonter who lives on the 100-acre farm where he was raised.

 

Dee Davis is the founder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies. Dee has helped design and lead national public information campaigns on topics as diverse as commercial television programming and federal banking policy. Dee began his media career in 1973 as a trainee at Appalshop, an arts and cultural center devoted to exploring Appalachian life and social issues in Whitesburg, Kentucky. As Appalshop's executive producer, the organization created more than 50 public TV documentaries, established a media training program for Appalachian youth, and launched initiatives that use media as a strategic tool in organization and development. He is the chair of the Rural Assembly steering committee; a member of the Rural Advisory Committee of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Fund for Innovative Television, and Feral Arts of Brisbane, Australia. He is also a member of the Institute for Rural Journalism’s national advisory board. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Work and the Economy. Dee is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. Dee is also the former Chair of the board of directors of Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. Dee received an English degree from the University of Kentucky. He lives in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

 

Michael Romano joined NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association as senior vice president of industry affairs and business development on August 23, 2010. Romano oversees the organization's public policy, government affairs, business development and Foundation for Rural Service initiatives on behalf of its nearly 850 small rural telecom provider members. Before joining NTCA, Romano was of counsel at Bingham McCutchen, LLP, where he advised telecom carriers regarding broadband stimulus and other federal broadband network funding opportunities, and negotiated agreements on a variety of issues including equipment and software licensing and sales, outsourcing arrangements and dispute settlements, among other duties. Prior to joining Bingham McCutchen, Romano served as vice president and general counsel of Global Telecom & Technology, was counsel in the intellectual property group at America Online, and held a number of positions in the legal department of Level 3 Communications. He began his legal career as an associate at Swidler Berlin, LLP.

 

Evan Marwell is a serial entrepreneur, having started companies over the last 25 years in the telecom, software, hedge fund, and consumer retailing industries including INFONXX (now KGB) and Criterion Capital Management. Collectively, these businesses created thousands of jobs and generated billions of dollars of revenues and investment returns. Evan founded the non-profit EducationSuperHighway in 2012. In its first three years, the organization helped shape President Obama’s ConnectED initiative and served as a catalyst for modernization of the Federal Communications Commission’s $3.9 billion E-rate program, earning Evan the 2015 Visionary of the Year award from the San Francisco Chronicle. Evan is an honors graduate of Harvard College ’87 and Harvard Business School ’92.

 

Howard Blumenthal created and produced the PBS television series, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? He is currently a Senior Scholar at The University of Pennsylvania, studying learning and the lives of 21st-century children and teenagers. He travels the world, visiting K-12 schools, lecturing at universities, and interviewing young people for Kids on Earth, a global platform containing nearly 1,000 interview segments from Kentucky, Brazil, Sweden, India, and many other countries. Previously, he was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, and United Features. He is the author of 24 books and several hundred articles about technology, learning, business, and human progress. As an executive, Howard was the CEO of a public television operation and several television production companies, and a state government official. Previously, he was a Senior Vice President for divisions of two large media companies, Hearst and Bertelsmann, and a consultant or project lead for Energizer, General Electric, American Express, CompuServe, Warner Communications, Merriam-Webster, Atari, and other companies.