Jon Schnur
Jon Schnur is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of New Leaders for New Schools, a national non-profit organization with one mission: ensuring high academic achievement for every student by attracting and preparing outstanding leaders and supporting the performance of the urban public schools they lead at scale. Since co-founding New Leaders, he has led the development of the organization's goals, metrics, and strategy, as well as the management team, board, core values, partnerships, and fundraising.
New Leaders provides the individuals selected to participate in the program with rigorous, hands-on training that prepares them to be outstanding principals who are focused on meeting the needs of every child and who are highly effective instructional leaders, managers, community leaders, and leaders of change. New Leaders partners with major urban public school systems in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Oakland, Baltimore, and most recently Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Prince George’s County, MD. Currently, 427 New Leaders school leaders serve more than 200,000 children. By 2014, New Leaders anticipates it will be training 20-25 percent of the new principals in the U.S. needed for urban, low-income public schools.
New Leaders is supported by a broad coalition of public and private sector leaders in the education, corporate, philanthropic, and political sectors. Major philanthropic funders include The Broad Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, NewSchools Venture Fund, and other leading philanthropists across the nation. Major corporate sponsors include The Boeing Company, Capital One, FedEx, and more.
Based on its results, New Leaders has received important national recognition, including being honored in January 2006 as one of the highest rated social enterprise in the U.S by Fast Company/Monitor Group. In addition, New Leaders was one of only six programs – and the only national program – highlighted in a “Best Practice Guide to School Leadership” by the U.S. Department of Education being distributed to all 50 states nationally.
Jon has served as Special Assistant to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, President Clinton's White House Associate Director for Educational Policy, and Senior Advisor on Education to Vice President Gore. He has developed national educational policies on teacher and principal quality, after-school programs, district reform, charter schools, and preschools. Jon graduated from Princeton University and a Wisconsin public high school. He is deeply committed to educational excellence for every child. Jon adores spending time with his wife Elisa and 3-year-old son Matthew Sam, and baby daughter Elizabeth Rebecca.
