Office of the CEO & President
Wendy Kopp
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Wendy Kopp is the chief executive officer and founder of Teach For America. She proposed the creation of Teach For America in her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton in 1989 and has spent more than 20 years working to grow the organization’s impact. Under her leadership, Teach For America’s nearly 38,000 participants have reached more than 3 million children nationwide during their two-year teaching commitments. They have sustained their commitment as alumni, working inside and outside the field of education to ensure educational excellence and equity for all children.
Kopp is also chief executive officer and co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent social enterprises which are working to expand educational opportunity in their nations by recruiting and developing their nation's most promising future leaders to commit two years to teach in high-need areas and become lifelong leaders for educational excellence and equity. Teach For All seeks to accelerate and increase the impact of network organizations, including Teach For America, by deepening commitment to the unifying model around the world, collaborating with network organizations to develop and adapt best practices, fostering global networks of staff members, participants, and alumni, and generating access to additional resources internationally.
Kopp is the author of the Washington Post bestseller A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All and One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way. She is also the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards for public service. She resides in New York City with her husband Richard Barth and their four children.
Matthew Kramer
President
As president, Matthew Kramer is responsible for Teach For America’s overall performance, operations, and effectiveness. He works closely with the chief executive officer and leadership team to guide Teach For America’s long-term strategy, make operating decisions (including resource allocation), and develop the optimal organizational culture. He joined Teach For America after working at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, where he was a partner and leader in the North American Financial Institutions practice. In addition to his work with insurers and asset managers, Kramer has also served nonprofit institutions focused on K-12 education. Prior to joining McKinsey, Kramer received a B.A. in economics from Harvard University.
Leadership Team
Susan Asiyanbi
Executive Vice President, Teacher Preparation, Support and Development
Susan Asiyanbi is responsible for ensuring corps members have the necessary training and ongoing program support to lead their students to success as highly effective teachers. After teaching fourth grade math and science in Newark as a 2001 corps member, Asiyanbi joined staff as a program director in 2003 supporting new corps members in our Newark region. She then served as managing director of the charter Philadelphia Institute and subsequently as the vice president of institutes before leaving to pursue her graduate degree. Prior to returning to Teach For America, Asiyanbi summered at Boston Consulting Group and joined Sears Holding Company as a senior leader associate reporting to the CEO on key strategic initiatives. Asiyanbi earned her B.A. from Williams College, received her M.A. in Education Administration & Supervision from St. Peters College, and obtained her M.B.A. from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
Elisa Villanueva Beard
Chief Operating Officer
Elisa Villanueva Beard leads Teach For America’s 46 regions in building the movement in their communities, alongside others, toward closing the achievement gap. During her tenure as chief operating officer, Villanueva Beard has managed the growth of the organization’s regional funding base from $29 million to $185 million, and its expansion from 22 to 46 regions. Under her leadership, Teach For America currently impacts more than 750,000 students in over 2,600 schools. Villanueva Beard joined staff as executive director of the organization’s Rio Grande Valley site. During her four years as executive director, she grew the region’s funding base 17-fold, created a community advisory board, and oversaw a corps of teachers that more than doubled. Villanueva Beard was a 1998 Teach For America corps member who taught bilingual first and second grades in Phoenix for three years. She also served as her school’s basketball coach and grade-level chair, and was a member of the school site-based committee. Villanueva Beard holds a B.A. in sociology from DePauw University. She lives with her husband Jeremy and their two sons in Houston, TX.
Garrett Bucks
Chief Marketing + Communications Officer
Garrett Bucks brings a deep understanding of Teach For America and the national education landscape to his role as Chief Marketing Officer. As a 2003 New Mexico corps member, Bucks led his fifth grade students to grow three grade levels in math and two in reading. He then completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Stockholm and worked as a teacher at the Heartland Alliance in Chicago, developing an innovative vocational training program for refugees and setting records for student growth in English proficiency. Bucks joined staff in 2007 as a recruitment director in Wisconsin before becoming the founding executive director (ED) of Milwaukee. During his two years as an ED, Bucks nearly doubled the region’s original planned corps size and set a national precedent for the number of alumni committing to long-term educational advocacy in the city. Bucks earned a B.A. in 2003 from Earlham College and post-graduate studies in education and international relations at the University of New Mexico and Stockholm University.
Aimée Eubanks Davis
Executive Vice President of People, Community, and Diversity
Aimée Eubanks Davis joined Teach For America’s staff in 2002 as vice president of new site development, helping to grow the organization’s presence into Miami and Philadelphia, as well as doubling Teach For America’s presence in New York City. In 2003, Eubanks Davis moved to the regional operations team, where she managed Teach For America’s executive directors and helped ensure maximum impact in each of the organization’s 22 regions. In 2005, Eubanks Davis became the chief people officer, and oversaw the organization’s staff growth from 200 to over 1500 staff members. Additionally, she worked on the development of a comprehensive competency model for staff recruitment, selection, performance management, and learning and development, and ensured that the Human Assets team is positioned to fuel the growth and success of Teach For America through being a strategic business partner to organizational leaders and teams. In 2011, Eubanks Davis took on the expanded role of executive vice president of people, community and diversity, leading our work to uphold our commitment to diversity and to build an organization that is a model of fairness and equality. Before joining Teach For America’s staff, Eubanks Davis was a program officer at The Breakthrough Collaborative (formerly Summerbridge National) and, prior to that position, she led the Summerbridge New Orleans site to become one of the most successful sites in The Breakthrough Collaborative. Eubanks Davis, a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, was a 1995 Teach For America corps member and taught sixth grade social studies and language arts in New Orleans.
Josh Griggs
Chief Administrative Officer
Josh Griggs leads the teams responsible for all of the critical functions that comprise Teach For America’s infrastructure, including finance, administration, technology and legal affairs. The breadth of Griggs' experience producing results across a variety of functions at Teach For America positioned him well for this leadership role. In 2008, Griggs became the vice president of our Admissions team and managed the effort to review more than 40,000 applications to the corps each year. During his tenure on the Admissions team, he also oversaw two major changes to the admissions process—the move from two to four deadlines and the addition of an applicant phone interview. Griggs joined Teach For America’s staff in 2005 as a recruitment director and helped train incoming corps members as a corps member advisor at the Philadelphia institute. Griggs was a 2003 corps member and taught fourth grade in New York City. He earned a B.A. from Yale University and a master’s degree in teaching from Fordham University.
Elissa Kim
Executive Vice President for Recruitment & Admissions
Elissa Kim manages Teach For America’s recruitment and admissions teams. Since 1999, she has produced a 26% compound annual growth rate in applications. In 2012, she and her team attracted 48,442 applicants—a record for Teach For America; out of those applicants, her team selected 5,800 corps members. Elissa joined Teach For America's staff after teaching ninth and tenth grade English for three years as part of the 1996 Greater New Orleans corps. In August 2012, Elissa was elected to the Metro Nashville Public School's Board of Education, representing its 5th district. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in history and religion and played varsity tennis.
Eric Scroggins
Executive Vice President of Growth, Development, and Partnerships
Eric Scroggins is responsible for ensuring Teach For America fulfills its potential as a force for change by building an ever-expanding and increasingly diverse movement of leaders in the private and public sectors committed to educational excellence and opportunity for all children. Eric joined staff as a program director supporting new teachers in New York City after teaching eighth grade science in the Bronx as a 2001 corps member where he led his students to outperform high school students on the New York State Regents examination. He then served as the executive director of the St. Louis region, before going on to lead the San Francisco Bay Area region. As executive director in the Bay Area, he oversaw a 180% increase in the regional corps size in three years and grew funding from $2 million to over $8 million. Most recently, as vice president of growth strategy and now EVP of growth, development, and partnerships Eric has led the implementation of new models connecting growth and development. Under his leadership, Teach For America has opened 16 new sites and grown regional revenue from $82 million in 2008 to $228 million in 2012, fueling a 67% increase in the national total corps size to over 10,000 corps members teaching across 46 regions. Eric graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University in St. Louis.
Andrea Stouder Pursley
Executive Vice President of Alumni Affairs
Andrea Stouder Pursley leads our Alumni Affairs team towards maximizing the impact of over 28,000 Teach For America alumni across the country. Andrea first joined staff over a decade ago in 2002 as a corps member in Phoenix, Arizona. She taught for three years in the Roosevelt Elementary School District and also became her school’s grade level chair and led planning for teacher hiring for the district. After leaving the classroom, Andrea became executive director of Teach For America’s Phoenix region and led her team through a period of extraordinary progress, doubling the corps size and increasing annual funding from $800,000 to more than $6 million. Over the subsequent two years, she served as a vice president on our Teacher Preparation, Support and Development team and then on our Regional Operations team. Andrea graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Southern Methodist University where she was also a NCAA Division I varsity swimmer and a qualifier for 200M breaststroke in the 2000 Olympic Trials. Andrea lives in Phoenix with her husband Brian and their two young children.
Jeff Wetzler
Executive Vice President, Teacher Preparation, Support, and Development, and Chief Learning Officer
Jeff Wetzler joined Teach For America after working at Monitor Group, an international consulting firm, where he developed and led client engagements to advise executives on a range of strategic, organizational, and leadership issues. While at Monitor, Wetzler also led new product development initiatives and managed global training in the area of interpersonal effectiveness. Wetzler currently serves on the national board of Rocketship Education and is also the vice chair on the founding board of three Leadership Prep (Uncommon Schools) charter elementary schools in Brooklyn, NY. He earned a B.S. in psychology from Brown University and an M.A. in adult learning and leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University. While at Brown, he cofounded Providence Science Outreach, a nonprofit organization that equips university students to use hands-on projects to get kids in under-resourced schools excited about science.
General Counsel
Tracy-Elizabeth Clay
Senior Vice President, Legal Affairs; General Counsel
Tracy-Elizabeth Clay provides legal counsel, guidance, and strategic advice in support of Teach For America. She ensures legal and regulatory compliance while promoting Teach For America’s interests in matters related to contracts and general business law, real estate, litigation, employment and labor law, intellectual property, risk management, and insurance. Clay also serves as corporate secretary for Teach For America. Since joining the organization, she has held a variety of positions including director of state and local government affairs, and founding executive director of the Philadelphia region. In addition, Clay was the founding general counsel and corporate secretary for Teach For All, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization which provides technical assistance and support to social entrepreneurs in more than 20 countries who are applying the teacher-leadership development model pioneered by Teach For America to educational inequities that exist within their countries. Clay also serves as general counsel for Leadership for Educational Equity, a social welfare organization dedicated to fostering the public leadership of Teach For America. Tracy-Elizabeth Clay clerked for the Hon. Anne E. Thompson of the US District of New Jersey and is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).
Chief Knowledge Officer
Steven Farr
Chief Knowledge Officer
Steven Farr, author of Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap, leads Teach For America's efforts to discern what distinguishes teachers whose students in low-income communities achieve dramatic academic growth. He joined staff as vice president of training and support in 2001 and has managed the research and development of a number of Teach For America's training texts. He has contributed to the development of the Teaching As Leadership framework and rubric, as well as Teach For America's online resources built around those ideas. Farr taught high school English and English as a second language as a part of the 1993 Teach For America corps in the Rio Grande Valley. Farr is a graduate of the University of Texas's Plan II Honors program and Yale Law School.
Chief Financial Officer
Miguel Rossy
Chief Financial Officer
Prior to joining Teach For America, Miguel Rossy was responsible for leading the finance function and critical infrastructure growth initiatives in New York Life’s Investment Management unit. Rossy brings 16 years of financial and strategic management experience from the corporate world, including incremental leadership roles at Brinker International, where he provided business strategy and financial analysis support to the company’s fast-growing Mexican Division, and led Brinker’s company-wide strategic planning efforts. Most recently, he served as vice president and divisional CFO of Chili’s, Brinker’s leading brand with over 1,000 restaurants in 23 countries. Rossy earned his M.B.A. in 1995 from Columbia Business School.
