Matthew PilarskiBoard President
Matthew Pilarski is the founder and director of The Learning Design Project, a school design firm focused on helping communities think differently about the high school space. Prior to founding The Learning Design Project, Matthew was with Connecticut RISE as the Director of Network Success, where he oversaw the school-facing teams responsible for providing high-quality professional development, raising student outcomes in all network schools, and using data to drive decision making. Matthew was also a Senior Director at Springpoint: Partners in School Design, where he worked nationally to both design and redesign high schools models with a focus on equity-based principles, student-centered design, and instructional leadership. Matthew has also worked at TNTP as a Partner on TNTP’s Client Team heading up the SanFranciscoPLUS program. Matthew began his career working for two of the largest urban districts in the country as an Instructional Support Leader with Chicago Public Schools on Chicago’s South Side and as both a teacher and a school leader for eleven years in the South Bronx in New York City, overseeing a high school where over 90 percent of students qualified for free and reduced-price lunch.
Matthew holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan, an MA in Secondary English Education from NYU, and an MEd in School Leadership from Columbia University’s Teachers College. |
Mitra GrantBoard Treasurer
A graduate of both UC Berkeley in Secondary Urban Education, MA and Columbia University Organizational Leadership, Ed. M, Mitra brings over 15 years of experience working with adolescents in school settings across the country. As a founding teacher and assistant principal of the Bronx Academy of Letters, an open enrollment public high school and middle school in the South Bronx, Mitra led the school's development of SEL practices across instructional, cultural, enrichment, and college preparation programs. In 2010 Mitra joined the national non-profit, iMentor, as Managing Director to lead NYC's college readiness mentoring program in 25 high schools across the city, serving approximately 5,000 students. As a private consultant for the last 5 years, Mitra has supported design teams in the opening of more than 20 new schools across the country, specifically in developing school models which support the SEL needs of adolescents. In her spare time Mitra runs her family's winery in northern CA, which she is completely unqualified to do.
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Victoria CrispinBoard Secretary
Victoria is a seasoned caregiver, a bereavement specialist, and an operations expert who has worked to ensure that those in need of care-and those tasked with providing care-are well-positioned to access the requisite resources for a dignified end-of-life transition. Drawing on expertise in project management, programming and operations, and positive youth development, Victoria serves as Senior Director at Springpoint, where she oversees organization-wide operations as well as manages and deploys a fleet of former high school principals and administrators to conduct qualitative walkthroughs in high schools around the country. Prior to Springpoint, she served as a director at the New York City Department of Education where she provided strategy and technical assistance to teams specializing in postsecondary readiness for NYC's 1.1 million students.
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