Meet Ken

I am a proud parent of three APS students. Julie, my wife, and I moved here from Los Angeles over 10 years ago because we wanted to build a community for our young family and find outstanding schools for our children. We found it all in Atlanta!

 

My perspective has been informed by my view of education from multiple vantage points. I served as chief strategy officer and then superintendent of Fulton County Schools, a district that surrounds Atlanta. After that experience, I became the founding executive director of Learn4Life, a nonprofit partnership of the metro Atlanta school systems dedicated to finding and scaling what works to serve kids.

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During my time leading Fulton County Schools, the culture of empowering local communities shaped my views of how public schools could better work for families and students. And more importantly, this work had a dramatic impact on results. Student achievement improved throughout the district. As a result, the district was recognized as Charter System of the Year by the Lt. Governor. Before our time in Atlanta, I served as a White House Fellow and a senior policy consultant to the US Secretary of Education. I took a leave of absence from my career in management consulting to spend a year in AmeriCorps VISTA building computer learning centers in Seattle.

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My doctorate from Georgia State University centered on education policy that works for kids. My MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania provides me a unique set of business analytics to address the economic challenges faced by districts navigating bond issues and complex budget processes. I earned my bachelors in economics and political science from the University of Michigan, where I spent my weekends in the cold weather cheering on the maize and blue.

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