The Center on Reinventing Public Education has announced its inaugural AI Fellowship Cohort, a group of visionary policymakers, system leaders, educators, researchers, funders, and tech experts who will collectively work to address the toughest challenges around AI in education.
Education systems are at a critical crossroads with AI. New tools are emerging every day in a system with no coherent strategy for adoption and no consistent guardrails in place to mitigate risks. Without a shared commitment to coherence, even the most promising innovations will fail to deliver sustainable impact, especially for students who have been historically underserved.
The Think Forward Fellows will convene in November at the Think Forward: AI Learning Forum. Discussion will focus on three key areas:
- Vision and Learning Design: Setting a dynamic long-term vision for what American education looks like in an AI-powered world, and what we need to do to get there.
- Systems, Infrastructure, and Alignment: Creating the conditions for coherent AI adoption at the state and district level to match the goals and vision.
- Messaging and Action: Using clear communication strategies to move from fragmented adoption toward durable system transformation.
Fellows will bring insights and recommendations from the convening back to their communities and networks, identify new opportunities to drive action across the sector, and continue to engage with CRPE and each other over the next year to advance bold ideas for systems change in the age of AI. By bringing this group together now, CRPE is making a powerful statement that AI in education is here to stay. We must move quickly to act on the opportunities and solve the challenges AI presents.
Members of the inaugural AI fellowship cohort include:
- Adam Garry – President, StrategicEDU Consulting
- Alex Kotran – CEO & Co-Founder, The AI Education Project (aiEDU)
- Amy McGrath – CEO & Managing Director, ASU Preparatory Academy
- Andrea Pasinetti – Co-Founder, CEO, Kira
- Andy Rotherham – Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether
- Babak Mostaghimi – Partner, LearnerStudio
- Beth Rabbitt – Chief Executive Officer, FullScale
- Cameron White – Senior Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund
- Cara Candal – Vice President, Policy, ExcelinEd
- Carole Basile – Dean, ASU Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation
- Chong-Hao Fu – CEO, Leading Educators
- Chris Unger – Co-Founder and Co-Director, The LEARN Lab, Northeastern University
- D’Andre Weaver – Vice President & Chief Powerful Learning Officer, Digital Promise
- Dacia Toll – Co-CEO, Coursemojo
- Dan Effland – Senior Director of Innovation, Marshall Street @ Summit Public Schools
- David Mansouri – President & CEO, Tennessee SCORE
- Diane Tavenner – Co-Founder & CEO, Futre.me
- Eden Xenakis – Chief of Staff, Bezos Family Foundation
- Jen Alexander – Executive Director, PIE Network
- Joel Rose – Co-Founder & CEO, New Classrooms
- Julia Freeland Fisher – Director of Education Research, Clayton Christensen Institute
- Lewis Leiboh – Deputy Director, K-12 Education, Gates Foundation
- Megan McCarthy – Strategy Officer, Gates Foundation
- Michele Leardo – Program Officer, Education Program, Walton Family Foundation
- Michelle Culver – Founder, The Rithm Project
- Mike Taubman – Teacher and Program Director, Uncommon Schools
- Nick Potkalitsky – AI Specialist, Educational Service Center of Central Ohio
- Pedro Martinez – Commissioner, Department of Education, Massachusetts
- Richard Culatta – CEO, ISTE+ASCD
- Ross Lipstein – Chief Product Officer, Transcend
- Sarah Johnson – CEO, Teaching Lab
- Sasha Rabkin – Chief of Program Strategy and Innovation, AERDF
- Scott Bess – President/CEO, Indiana Charter Innovation Center
- Sonya Thomas – Executive Director, Nashville PROPEL
- Sunanna Chand – Executive Director, The Reinvention Lab at Teach For America
- Susanna Loeb – Professor, Stanford University
- Tara Carrozza – Director of Digital Learning Initiatives, NYC Public Schools
- Tiffany Green – CEO, Uprooted Academy
- Winston Roberts – AI Innovation Lead, Foundation Academies
