Marisa has spent her career focused on innovation in education, with a focus on improving outcomes for students and families nationwide. She is excited to be back home in California supporting increased economic opportunity for adult learners across the state. Marisa was most recently Deputy Director for K-12 Education at the Walton Family Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation, she served as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor in the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Previously, Marisa was a Director at the New York City Department of Education, a Leadership Fellow at NewSchools Venture Fund, and a founding Education Pioneers Fellow at Aspire Public Schools, along with past work in organizational development and management consulting. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Christopher Capozzola is Elting E. Morison Professor of History and Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He oversees open education offerings including OpenCourseWare, MITx, and MicroMasters, as well as the Digital Credentials Consortium, MIT Digital Learning Lab, Digital Learning in Residential Education, and MIT Video Productions.

As part of his work with MIT instructors, he supports the inclusion of educational technology innovations that advance teaching and learning at MIT and around the world. He serves on the Faculty Advisory Board of MIT Solve, and convenes MIT’s Generative AI Faculty Learning Community.

The author of two books, Capozzola has taught U.S. history at MIT for more than twenty years and in 2018 was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT’s highest honor for undergraduate teaching.

Marie Groark leads grantmaking at the Schultz Family Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Marie was at Paramount, where she founded and led Get Schooled, a nonprofit organization that supports young people as they navigate education, the job market, or both. Guided by Marie’s leadership, Get Schooled was named a Most Innovative Company by Fast Company for its use of gamification to drive youth engagement and improve student outcomes. Marie was previously a Senior Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and also advised public, non-profit, and private sector clients as a management consultant with PwC Consulting. She began her career as a social studies teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx.

Marie holds a BA from New York University, an MA from Teacher’s College at Columbia University, and an MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She lives in Seattle with her husband, three children, and Australian Shepherd, Teddy. Marie is actively involved in her children’s schools and her neighborhood Scout committee, and volunteers as a VITA tax preparer with United Way King County during tax season.

Amy Guterman is a design and innovation leader with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of design, technology, and social good. As the Senior Director of Innovation, Philanthropy at Salesforce, she leads the Salesforce Accelerator – AI for Impact, a pioneering initiative that provides funding, technology, and technical support to advance AI solutions addressing education and climate justice. Previously, Amy launched Salesforce.org Impact Labs to de-risk innovation for nonprofits and schools by co-designing impactful, open-source technology solutions.

With a strong foundation in human-centered design and innovation strategy, Amy has spearheaded initiatives that empower organizations to take risks and drive meaningful change. She has led projects ranging from designing global health information systems to building technology to support financial aid applications. Amy’s work has been recognized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The White House and featured in leading publications such as Forbes, Fast Company, and Wired.

She holds a Master of Design Methods with a focus on innovation strategy from the IIT Institute of Design and a BFA in Visual Communications from Washington University in St. Louis. As a speaker and educator, Amy inspires audiences worldwide on the power of design and technology to create lasting social impact.

Mei-Yen is the deputy director for digital holistic student supports as a part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success strategy. Mei-Yen leads the team advancing the availability and adoption of equity-centered digital holistic student supports tools that leverage the power human interaction supported by data and technology to ensure that more students, particularly Black, Latino, and Indigenous students, and students experiencing poverty thrive in their postsecondary journey and achieve credentials that increase socioeconomic mobility.

Lydia Logan leads IBM’s community and university skilling initiatives that create more inclusive and effective schools and workforces. Her programs help fulfill IBM’s pledge to skill 30 million people worldwide by 2030, and to skill two-million learners with AI expertise through 2026 — particularly those from historically under-resourced, under-served, and underrepresented communities.

For this role, she applies her decades of leadership and programmatic expertise in the realms of philanthropy, education, public policy, and economic development. These experiences inform Ms. Logan’s strategic development and execution of acclaimed global programs such as IBM SkillsBuild.

Ms. Logan also develops and manages strategic global partnerships with IBM’s clients, non-profit organizations, government, and content and curriculum developers that relate to education and career readiness. IBM’s investments in education and skills are part of the company’s efforts to mobilize technology and employee talent to address some of society’s biggest challenges worldwide, including environmental sustainability.

Prior to IBM, Ms. Logan led the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools initiative that provides technology and training to under-resourced public schools. She served as senior policy director at the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, where she drove education policy and philanthropic investments to improve the management, quality, and transparency of public schools. Ms. Logan also served as the VP of programs for the Kimsey Foundation, to improve educational outcomes at under-resourced public schools, and helped low-income families bridge the digital divide.

Ms. Logan holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Carlos Monje Jr. is Head of JP Morgan Chase’s PolicyCenter, which develops and advances sustainable, evidence-based policy solutions to drive inclusive economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.

Monje most recently served as Under Secretary of Transportation Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The third-highest-ranking official in the department, Monje supervised policy, research, innovative finance, international affairs and project delivery. He led the team that helped pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), a $650 billion infusion into our nation’s infrastructure system. He formed and led the implementation team that has funded 45,000 projects around the country and was recognized by the Partnership for Public Service with a 2023 Service to America Award (colloquially known as the Sammies, or the Oscars of federal service).

Monje led process for the Biden-Harris presidential transition where he recruited, trained and deployed more than 400 volunteers to do a top-to-bottom review of the federal government amidst a pandemic and contested election.

Monje served as Twitter’s Director of Policy and Philanthropy for the US and Canada at a time of unprecedented scrutiny for the tech sector.

Monje was previously Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff of the White House Domestic Policy Council where he helped oversee all aspects of policy, message and event development across a wide spectrum of domestic policy issues. He also was a founding staffer of the White House Office of Social Innovation, where he oversaw efforts to pass and implement the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and promoted cross-sector partnerships.

Dr. Elizabeth Reilley is the Executive Director, AI Acceleration, with Enterprise Technology at Arizona State University. Previously at ASU, she worked in the area of Data and Analysis also within Enterprise Technology. Elizabeth has 15 years of experience in higher education working in Academic Affairs, Information Technology, and Strategy and Policy.

She has a PhD in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BA in Philosophy and Community and Justice Studies from Guilford College.

Philipp Schmidt is CTO of Axim Collaborative, a non-profit organization founded by MIT and Harvard to address systemic equity gaps in higher-education. He is also a research scientist at MIT and advisor for digital credentials. Prior to joining Axim, Philipp was the Director of Digital Learning at the MIT Media Lab. He has extensive experience developing technology-enabled programs that increase opportunities for learning and education. Philipp founded Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), a non-profit that provides wrap-around support for online courses through a network of public libraries, serves on the board of College Unbound, a college designed from the ground up to serve adult students, and was a founding board member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. He co-authored the Cape Town Open Education Declaration and has developed a number of open standards for digital academic credentials including Mozilla Open Badges. He has received Shuttleworth and Ashoka fellowships, and came to MIT as a Media Lab Director’s fellow. Before moving to the US, he lived and worked in South Africa. He holds a CS degree from FH Furtwangen in Germany and an MBA from MIT.

Tom Tasche is an Associate Managing Director at ideas42, where he leads a portfolio of projects focused on leveraging behavioral insights to improve outcomes for adult learners. Working collaboratively with college leadership and academic experts, Tom leads teams through a hypothesis-driven design process to develop, test, and scale new approaches that can sustainably boost persistence and completion in higher education. In his time at ideas42, he has also led work in public health and civic engagement.

Prior to joining ideas42, Tom worked in development finance and international economics as a policy advisor at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and a desk economist at the U.S. Treasury Department. He also has experience advising startup, nonprofit, and philanthropic leaders on strategy and innovation.

Tom received his B.A. and M.P.A. from Princeton University as a fellow in the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative at the School of Public and International Affairs, where he focused on behavioral economics and impact evaluation.

Jennifer Zeisler oversees ECMC Foundation’s strategically responsive grants and emerging initiatives portfolio, which supports project-based and reform-oriented efforts aimed at advancing systemic change to improve postsecondary persistence and degree completion for students from underserved backgrounds. Before joining ECMC Foundation, she worked at the Clinton Global Initiative where she helped leaders, including university students, government officials, foundation and business executives, university administrators, and nonprofit leaders, design new, specific and measurable projects. Prior to the Clinton Global Initiative, she spent five years working with the United States Peace Corps as both an overseas volunteer and United States-based recruiter, roles that expanded her experience in strategic planning, program development, and monitoring and evaluation. Other previous employers include a small arts-based nonprofit organization, a public hospital, a regional association of grantmakers, community and family foundations, and higher education institutions.

She holds a master of arts in philanthropic studies and a master of arts in public administration in nonprofit management from Indiana University, and a bachelor of science in communications from Old Dominion University. She currently serves as a member of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Board of Visitors, the president of the Old Dominion University Greater Los Angeles Alumni Chapter and a member of the Workforce Matters Funders Network Steering Committee.