Angela Haydel DeBarger is a Program Officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Her portfolio addresses open education, with the aim of democratizing knowledge, creating inclusive and engaging experiences for learners, and advancing racial equity in education systems.

Previously, Angela served as senior program officer for Lucas Education Research at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she led elementary and middle school project-based learning initiatives. From 2002 to 2014, she worked as an education researcher at SRI International. Her research focused on improving classroom pedagogy, specifically assessment strategies, to promote student learning and engagement in science. Angela has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University, a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan, and a doctorate in educational psychology from Stanford University. She is a native Californian and enjoys spending time with her two boys.

Ji Soo Song advises the Office of Educational Technology on policies and initiatives aimed at closing the digital divide, especially for historically-underserved students. He also serves as the principal point of contact on interagency collaborations around digital equity, including by representing the U.S. Department of Education on the American Broadband Initiative. Additionally, Ji Soo provides subject matter expertise on digital equity to Department-led external capacity building efforts. Prior to OET, Ji Soo was the senior policy advisor at ISTE, where he led the research, analysis, and communication of federal, state, and local policy issues related to digital learning standards, educator credentialing systems, and professional development funding streams. Ji Soo represented ISTE as a board member for the Title IV-A Coalition from 2020 to 2021. Ji Soo holds a B.A. in biology and education from Dartmouth College and M.Ed. in education policy and leadership from American University. He is currently also a 2021 fellow with the Institute for Educational Leadership’s Education Policy Fellowship Program. Finally, Ji Soo served as a City Year AmeriCorps Member in the District of Columbia, where he taught third-grade mathematics and robotics and received the 2018 WilmerHale Civic Innovation Award.

In 2013, Dr. Jemelleh Coes was nominated to represent Bulloch County as Teacher of the Year. She went on to become Georgia’s 2014 Teacher of the Year. She spent six years teaching English/language arts and math in both the general and special education setting at Langston Chapel Middle School in Statesboro, Georgia. Jemelleh is the daughter of immigrant parents and a first-generation university graduate. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Decatur, Georgia. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Education with a concentration in Special Education and her Master’s degree in Education with a concentration in Teaching and Learning from Georgia Southern University. Jemelleh earned her Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Practice with certificates in Education Law and Policy, Disability Studies, and Qualitative Research from the University of Georgia.

Jemelleh is the Director of Teacher Leadership at Mount Holyoke College where she leads the program, develops curriculum, and provides professional development opportunities for teacher leaders. She is also a professor at the University of Georgia where she teaches future educators along with future professionals dedicated to disability advocacy. She also serves as a teacher mentor for classroom teachers throughout the state. In this capacity, she supports teachers with career development and special projects. Her work has a laser focus on equity and disrupting traditional ways of engaging in education. She believes that equity is the thread that runs through everything! Jemelleh says, “In the sweater of life, if you remove the equity thread, you can guarantee indecent exposure.”

As Chief Executive Officer of UnboundEd, Lacey Robinson sets the vision for equity-driven national change as she carries generations of pride and tears of her enslaved ancestors along with the native sons and daughters of this sacred land. While keeping an eye on the design, delivery, and quality of all the organization’s antiracist work, she ensures UnboundEd’s health, sustainability and future-driven vision for what teaching and learning can be in the 21st century. From the organization’s infancy, in the role of Chief of Program and Engagement, Robinson engaged with industry partners to support standards-aligned, content-focused, equity-driven adult professional learning and development. While supporting vital design and execution elements for UnboundEd’s signature professional learning opportunity, the industry-leading Standards Institute, Robinson contributed to the rapid growth of an organization respected for its national programs and customized professional learning for K-12 educators, work that pivoted online during the pandemic to meet the specific needs of educators.
As a teacher, principal, and staff development specialist, Robinson maintained a focus on literacy, equity, and school leadership for more than two decades. Her life’s work aims to help educators in school systems disrupt systemic racism and all of its legacies in classrooms. Inspired by Langston Hughes, her path is to build temples for tomorrow, strong and brave as she knows how, and to ensure that future generations can stand free within themselves to be whomever they choose to be. As CEO, she pursues this passion by leading an organization known for the highest integrity in professional development experiences; experiences which honor us all as professionals in educating our nation’s children, and in leading the schools that serve them.

Sabia Prescott is a policy analyst with the Education Policy program at New America. Prior to joining New America, Sabia was a media policy fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Global Communication Studies and an English annotator at the Linguistic Data Consortium.

She holds an MPA from The George Washington University and a BA in linguistics from the University of Mary Washington. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

Claire Kaplan is the CEO and founder of Fishtank Learning, a non-profit organization working to provide teachers with high-quality, culturally responsive curriculum materials that engage, challenge and inspire their students. Claire has over thirty years of experience in the non-profit sector managing a broad range of efforts in school redesign and improvement, education research and policy, and education technology. Claire originally launched Fishtank Learning as Match Fishtank, a program of MatchEducation in 2016. At Match Claire oversaw the organization’s efforts to produce and disseminate innovative resources to share best practices and support teachers. Claire led the effort to spin out Fishtank Learning into a new nonprofit organization in December 2020.

Prior to joining Match, Claire was a Vice President at the National Center on Time and Learning where she led the organization's knowledge management and dissemination work and developed materials and tools to support effective school redesign. She produced numerous reports and videos on effective school practices, including the 2014 report, Time for Teachers: Leveraging Expanded Time to Strengthen Instruction and Empower Teachers and the 2011 report, Time Well Spent: Eight Powerful Practices of Successful, Expanded-Time Schools. Claire received her Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and her Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

In her role as Instructional Materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) Program Manager at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in Washington, Barbara Soots implements state legislation directing collection of K–12 OER resources aligned to state learning standards and promotion of OER awareness and adoption throughout the state.

Having facilitated educator review of open resources, managed grants supporting districts using OER, developed an agency open licensing policy, and led events about the importance of OER in the changing educational landscape, she is a national leader in the discussion about effective implementation of OER in K–12.

Lisa Petrides, Ph.D., is CEO and Founder of the education nonprofit Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). As a scholar and international open educational resources (OER) expert, she leads research, policy, and practice to support the field of open education, with the goal to make learning and knowledge-sharing participatory, equitable, and open. Her work also includes the development of ISKME's award winning OER Commons, a digital public library of open educational resources and collaboration platform that facilitates the discovery and improvement of high-quality digital resources that are free, openly licensed, and available for a diverse range of learners.

A former faculty member in the Department of Organizational Leadership at Columbia University, Teachers College, Petrides has advised and led development efforts that have enabled schools, colleges, universities, ministries of education, and the organizations that support them to expand their capacity to use data and information, and create inclusive knowledge-driven environments focused on teaching and learning.