Kate Walsh

Kate Walsh has served as the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) since 2002. Her commitment to addressing educational inequities and the nation's achievement gap has defined her career, with a long tenure as a senior program officer with The Abell Foundation, as well as the Baltimore City Public Schools and Core Knowledge Foundation. Her work has tackled a broad spectrum of need--from launching a highly successful program for gifted public school students that regularly produces finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, to starting The Baraka School, a unique boarding school located in Kenya established for the purpose of educating troubled and at-risk young boys from Baltimore City. A constant in Walsh's work is her strong belief in the capacity of a single teacher to alter a child's life for the better and that better policies offer the surest path to greater teacher quality. Her convictions are evident in the numerous studies and papers that she has authored and in practice, including starting the first alternative certification program in Maryland. Ms. Walsh was recently appointed by Governor Martin O'Malley to the Maryland State School Board.