EDUCATION (R)EVOLUTION 

Priscilla Chan is co-founder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. As a pediatrician and teacher, Priscilla’s work with patients and students in communities across the Bay Area has informed her desire to make learning more personalized, find new paths to manage and cure disease, and expand opportunity for more people. She is also the founder of The Primary School, which integrates health and education and serves children and families in East Palo Alto and the Belle Haven neighborhood in Menlo Park, California. Priscilla earned her BA in Biology at Harvard University and her MD at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She completed her pediatrics training in the UCSF/PLUS Pediatrics Residency.

Tre Johnson is a freelance writer on race and culture and a longtime career educator. His education began as a high school English teacher via Teach For America, and continued on in the DC Metro Area, Philadelphia, PA, and Camden, NJ in various roles that have included youth program manager, Executive Director (TFA Greater Philadelphia), and district central office administration (Camden City School District). Currently, he's DEI Partner for Catalyst:Ed, focused on the strategic delivery of capacity-building projects and initiatives with public sector partnerships and leaders to increase their DEI fluency. 

His writing focuses on the historical and cultural intersections of race, politics, and identity. His freelance career as a cultural critic and essayist has included appearances on CNN Tonight w/ Don Lemon; CBS This Morning; PBS NewsHour and NPR Morning Edition. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, New York Times, Vox, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and several other outlets. He's served on panels for the NY TV Festival, Black Star Film Festival, and others. He's also given keynote addresses and lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, St. Mary's College of Southern Maryland, and Lewis & Clark College. His first book, BLACK GENIUS: Our celebrations and our destructions, which will explore the phenomenon of Black excellence and its ability to succeed and sometimes be crushed by white systems and people, will be published by Dutton Books at Penguin Random House.

Outside of education, Tre has served as a board and vice-chair focused on issues such as education, teacher diversity, and juvenile sentencing and reentry. 

Tre is a graduate from the University of Maryland, proudly born and raised in Trenton, NJ and currently lives in Philadelphia, PA.

The recipient of Oprah's first "Chutzpah Award" for boldness, Irshad Manji is founder of Moral Courage ED, a nonprofit that empowers students to engage with empathy about polarizing issues. She is the New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of Don't Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars. (Fun fact: Chris Rock calls the book "genius.") A professor of leadership at New York University for many years, Irshad now teaches at Oxford University's Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights.

Nina Rees is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the charter school movement. Since joining the National Alliance in 2013, Nina has enhanced the organization’s stature in Washington, D.C., deepening relationships with members of both parties in Congress, multiple presidential administrations, and across the nonprofit and advocacy spaces. Over the course of her tenure, annual funding for the federal Charter Schools Program has grown from $254 million to $440 million.

Nina has also strengthened the operational health of the National Alliance. She has reshaped the board of directors to better reflect the charter school movement and build important connections with state Charter Support Organizations, leaders of Charter Management Organizations, policymakers, and educational innovators. To ensure the National Alliance’s financial sustainability, Nina has expanded relationships with donors who are passionate about improving opportunities in public education. She also regularly speaks as an authoritative voice for the charter school movement and an education policy expert on news outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, and PBS’s NewsHour. Her articles and opinions have been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Prior to joining the National Alliance, Nina spent 25 years shaping education policy in the public and private sectors. She served as the first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. In this capacity, she oversaw the administration of 28 grant programs totaling $2 billion and supporting 1,300 projects. She was also responsible for spearheading innovative federal programs and policies such as school choice, charter schools, and alternative routes to teacher certification and school leadership. Before moving to the Education Department, Nina worked in the White House as Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy to the Vice President of the United States.

As Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Knowledge Universe, Nina guided the partnerships and expansion strategy for a leading global education company with investments in early childhood education, before- and after-school programs, and online instruction. In the 1990s, Nina was the Heritage Foundation’s senior education analyst and chief spokesperson on education. She began her career on Capitol Hill, where she worked for then-Congressman Porter Goss.

Rees serves on the board of directors of the PIE Network, the advisory committee of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the advisory boards of Honored and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. She is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

A native of Iran who immigrated to America at the age of 14, Nina earned her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and a master’s degree at George Mason University. She now lives in McLean, Virginia, with her husband and daughter.