Pamela Cantor, M.D.

Founder and Senior Science Advisor, Turnaround for Children

Pamela Cantor, M.D., is the founder and senior science advisor of Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit organization that connects the dots between poverty, stress and academic performance in order to catalyze healthy student development and academic achievement. Dr. Cantor practiced child psychiatry for nearly two decades, specializing in trauma. She started Turnaround to help schools understand the impact of adversity on learning and to put children on a healthier developmental trajectory so they can be successful in school and in life.

Bethany Little

Principal, EducationCounsel

Bethany Little is a Principal at EducationCounsel, where she supports foundations, districts, states, institutions of higher education, education associations, and other nonprofits in driving systems change to improve equity and education from early childhood through higher education. Little has spent twenty years working in government and non-profit organizations, including the White House Domestic Policy Council, the U.S. Department of Education, and as Chief Education Counsel to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, as well as with the Children’s Defense Fund, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and America Achieves.  

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Scott Palmer

Partner, EducationCounsel

Scott Palmer is co-founder and managing partner of EducationCounsel, a mission-based organization that works with leading nonprofits, foundations, and policymakers to identify and advance systemic changes that can dramatically improve education equity and outcomes. Palmer provides policy, legal, strategy, and advocacy leadership and support on a wide-range of education and civil rights issues – at both the national and state/local levels.  Palmer previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the US Department of Education and as a policy and legal advisor in the Clinton White House where he worked on education and civil rights issues as part of the President’s Initiative on Race.

Todd Rose

Co-Founder & President, Populace

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Faculty Director, Mind, Brain, and Education Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Todd Rose is the director of the Mind, Brain, & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also leads the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual. His work is focused at the intersection of the science of individuality and the practice of personalization in education. He is also the co-founder of The Center for Individual Opportunity, a nonprofit organization that promotes the principles of individuality in work, school, and society. Todd is the author of The End of Average and Dark Horse.

Linda Darling-Hammond

President & CEO, Learning Policy Institute

Linda Darling-Hammond, President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign. She was recently appointed as the president of the California State Board of Education. Darling-Hammond has consulted widely with federal, state and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices.

David Osher

Vice President and Institute Fellow, American Institutes for Research

David Osher is vice president and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Osher is an expert on violence prevention, school safety, supportive school discipline, conditions for learning and school climate, social and emotional learning, youth development, cultural competence, family engagement, collaboration, mental health services, and implementation science. He has led impact and qualitative evaluations of initiatives and programs, systematic reviews, and expert panels, as well as projects that have developed surveys, and supported schools, districts, and states to promote conditions for learning, including school safety, and to address disciplinary disparities.

Karen Pittman 

Co-Founder, President and CEO, The Forum For Youth Investment

Karen Pittman has made a career of starting organizations and initiatives that promote youth development – including the Forum for Youth Investment, which she co-founded with Merita Irby in 1998. A sociologist and recognized leader in youth development, Karen started her career at the Urban Institute, conducting studies on social services for children and families. She later moved to the Children’s Defense Fund, launching its adolescent pregnancy prevention initiatives and helping to create its adolescent policy agenda.