Board Of Directors

Margie Yeager

Chair

Margie Yeager is a Partner at Education Forward DC, leading their Advocacy portfolio. In this role she helps direct philanthropic resources to create enabling conditions to advance quality and equity in public schools. Prior to this, she was the Director of Advocacy and Policy at Chiefs for Change, a bipartisan coalition of state and district members, and the Chief of Staff to the DC Deputy Mayor for Education. Margie began her career as a second-grade teacher at Simon Elementary in DC with Teach for America. She received her BA from Tufts University summa cum laude and her MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School with thesis honors.

Debbie Harrison

Vice Chair

Debbie Harrison is a Senior Director of Government Affairs at Cigna. Her career has focused on policy and legal advice related to employee benefits, health care, and tax matters. She has a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, an MA in internal policy from the University of Sydney, and a BA in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College. Debbie has been a member of the Rotary Club of Capitol Hill since 2008.

Dave Paris

Treasurer

Dave Paris is a Managing Director in the Forensic & Litigation Segment at FTI Consulting, Inc. He has over 30 years of experience addressing damages, valuation, and competition issues in complex commercial disputes in U.S. courts and administrative proceedings, and he also advises clients on issues involving intellectual property. These disputes and advisory engagements have involved patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, secondary considerations of non-obviousness, breach of contract, fraud, employment and antitrust violation, and covered a wide range of industries.  Mr. Paris has provided expert testimony on damages, including lost profits and reasonable royalties, and on economic issues, such as irreparable harm and commercial success.

Ja’Sent Brown

Secretary

Ja’Sent serves as the Chief Impact Officer at DC Central Kitchen where they use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities through job training and sustainable food access programming. Prior to this, Ja’Sent served as the Homeless Education State Coordinator to connect homeless families to educational services, and the inaugural Director of the DC Reengagement Center, which provides barrier remediation services to youth and young adults who have dropped out of high school, all at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English degree at the University of the District of Columbia, and a Master of Social Work degree at Walden University.  She is the proud wife of a 5^th District police officer, and mother of two.

Davey Ahearn

Davey Ahearn is the founder and CEO of BluestoneLogic, a systems, software, and cybersecurity engineering firm based in Washington, DC. Its founding premise was simple – the Department of Defense and other federal agencies maintained many legacy systems that no longer met the expectations set by the software and mobile apps their users used in their everyday lives. This generated a demand for creative systems modernization within the constraints of the policies that govern DoD’s mission system IT infrastructure. Davey holds a master’s degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University in English & Technical Communication. He currently lives in Washington, DC, where he enjoys playing tennis, competing in motorsports, and attending as many of the World Series Champion Washington Nationals’ games as possible.

Grace Katabaruki

Grace Katabaruki is an Organizational Transformation Manager at Deloitte Consulting. She was previously a Principal at Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), where for seven years she led day-to-day operations of the Investment Practice Group. Grace began her career as an educator, teaching for five years at Washington, DC’s Maret School, where she was awarded the Thomas Prize for Teachers New to Teaching. She received a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University and was selected as one of the inaugural Pablo Eisenberg Public Interest Fellows. She also graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College.

Cherrelle Swain

Cherrelle Swain is the Associate Director for Strategic Partnerships and Outreach at CityBridge Education, where she develops the talent pipeline of new school founders, establishes relationships to support school founders develop the business side of their model, and builds strategic partnerships. Prior to this, Cherrelle was the Development Officer for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS). Cherrelle majored in International Business with a concentration in Information Systems at Howard University. She then spent three years teaching English in Spain as a fellow for Spain’s Ministry of Education, while earning an MBA from the University of Seville in International Business.

Terri Taylor

Terri Taylor is the strategy director for postsecondary finance at Lumina Foundation, where she works to illuminate and address the many facets of financial need, especially for adult learners and students of color. Prior to this, she spent six years at Education Counsel as Senior Policy & Legal Advisor, advising organizations, institutions, and foundations on ways to achieve their goals in the complex American K-12 and higher education policy and practice environment. Terri earned her B.A., with distinction, in American studies and religious studies from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Eric Goldstein

CEO & Founder

Eric founded the program as a classroom teacher at SEED Public Charter School in Anacostia and has run the organization ever since. His career in education started after a solo, 5,000-mile bicycle trip across the United States. As a teacher, Eric earned a United States Department of the Interior Partners in Education Award. Eric holds a Master’s in Education from the University of Vermont and Master’s in International Policy from George Washington University.