Senior Philanthropic Leaders Meeting with Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona

January 31, 3:00 - 4:00 pm ET

View the recording.

Resources in the call:

• Department of Education “Raise the Bar: Lead the World” Initiative
• ARPA and Philanthropy Sept. 2022 Webinar

Senior philanthropic leaders are invited to join this conversation with the U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona. The Secretary will share the Education Department's priorities and strategic initiatives in 2023, focusing on Latino students and partnering with philanthropy.

Join the executive leadership of Grantmakers for Education, the Council on Foundations and Hispanics in Philanthropy for a kick-off dialogue with foundation executives and senior staff with the U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona.

The Secretary will share the department's priorities and strategic initiatives in 2023, with a special focus on priorities for Latino students, as well as discuss the ongoing relationship the department would like to have with philanthropy. The Secretary would like to hear from philanthropic leaders about your priority issues, so please come prepared for the Q&A portion of the webinar. Joining the Secretary for this first-time meeting with the philanthropic sector will be Shital Shah, the Secretary’s senior advisor for strategic partnerships.

President & CEO of Council on Foundations, Kathleen Enright, President & CEO of Hispanics in Philanthropy Ana Marie Argilagos and Co-Interim Executive Director of Grantmakers for Education, Ulcca Joshi Hansen will host the discussion.

About the Raising the Bar Series

This four-part series on raising the bar is intended to facilitate a united effort to reimagine education as part of U.S. ED's Raise the Bar: Lead the World initiative to prepare students for a future of global competitiveness and lifelong learning. The webinar series is a collaboration between Council on Foundations, Grantmakers for Education, Hispanics in Philanthropy and the U.S. Department of Education.

Future conversations with department senior program officials will follow in the spring on topics including diversifying the teacher workforce, college and career pathways, learning acceleration and early learning.

Please note this event is for senior staff with the following or very similar in their job titles: CEO, Executive Director, Vice President, Advisor, Director, Trustee.

Hosted in partnership with Council on Foundations and Hispanics in Philanthropy.

About the Speakers

Dr. Miguel Cardona
Secretary
U.S. Department of Education

Dr. Miguel A. Cardona was sworn in as the 12th Secretary of Education on March 2nd, 2021.

Secretary Cardona previously served as the Commissioner of Education in Connecticut, a position he held after being appointed by Governor Ned Lamont in August 2019. In this position, he faced the unprecedented challenge of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and led the safe school reopening efforts in Connecticut. To do so, Secretary Cardona and his Department provided school districts with the balance of guidance, local autonomy, and oversight needed to ensure equitable and meaningful educational opportunities for students while also prioritizing public health mitigation measures. Secretary Cardona and the State of Connecticut focused on equity by arranging for student access to technology to support remote learning, helping the state become the first in the nation to provide learning devices to fulfill the identified need for all students. Recognizing the increased importance of providing resources for the social-emotional health of students and staff, Secretary Cardona and his team collaborated with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and other stakeholders to provide free social and emotional learning courses.

Secretary Cardona’s approach to leadership in Connecticut focused on partnerships: within his Education Department; between State agencies; and with local boards, educator unions, school administrator associations, child advocates, and most importantly, students and families. He attributes his success in Connecticut in part to the strong backing of those partners, as well as support from the members of the Connecticut State Board of Education and his staff at the Connecticut State Department of Education.

Under Secretary Cardona’s oversight — despite the pandemic — Connecticut launched a statewide FAFSA Data Dashboard; procured a comprehensive statewide Special Education Data System (CT-SEDS); announced the State’s highest ever extended graduation rates for students with disabilities and English Learners; reached a new stipulated agreement in the landmark school integration case Sheff v. O’Neill, established the first national requirement for high schools provide courses on black and Latino studies; and initiated systemic improvement protocols that can reach every corner of the state. His focus on equity and excellence for all learners has driven his work at all levels.

Secretary Cardona has two decades of experience as a public school educator from the City of Meriden. He began his career as an elementary teacher. He then served as a school principal in Meriden in 2003 where he led a school with outstanding programming for three to five-year-olds, students that were bilingual, and students with sensory exceptionalities. He proudly served in this role for ten years. In 2012, Miguel won the 2012 National Distinguished Principal Award for the State of CT and the Outstanding Administrator Award from UCONN’s NEAG School of Education. Secretary Cardona then transitioned to lead the work of Performance and Evaluation in the district. He then assumed the role of Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, overseeing teaching, learning, and leadership alignment.

A lifelong Meriden resident, Dr. Cardona attended Meriden Connecticut Public Schools and graduated from Wilcox Technical High School. He attended CCSU for his Bachelor’s degree and UCONN where he completed a Master’s in Bilingual/Bicultural Education, Administrator Preparation Program, Doctorate in Education, and Executive Leadership Program (Superintendent) Certificate. Secretary Cardona is very active in his community, serving on several non-profit charitable organization boards of directors. He has had several articles published in AASPA Perspective, National School Boards Association, District Administration, and the Scholars Strategy Network.

His greatest source of pride, however, is his family. Secretary Cardona and his beautiful wife Marissa are the proud parents of two children.

Shital Shah
Senior Advisor, Senior Advisor for Strategic Partnerships
U.S. Department of Education

Shital was the Director of Philanthropic Engagement at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). She also served on the 2020 Biden-Harris Transition Team for the U.S. Department of Education. In her previous role, she cultivated and strengthened relationships with philanthropic and education industry partners to garner support for improving children’s well-being, creating powerful learning, building teacher capacity, and fostering school and community collaboration. She also managed AFT’s Innovation Fund grant-making efforts with a $1m budget, offering local communities the opportunity to incubate best practices locally and share with the field nationally as well as highlighting them to the philanthropic community. In this role she also oversaw AFT’s inter-departmental community school strategy, as well as the Center for School Improvement Institute, supporting both local field and national efforts. She has spent over a decade working in the field of community schools policy and practice. Through her work with local and national partners, she has provided strategic support and guidance to state and local affiliates related to policy, advocacy and school and district implementation of approaches to the community school strategy and extended learning time, including implications for collective bargaining. She currently sits on the National Coalition for Community Schools Steering Committee, where she advises on the Coalition’s strategic priorities. Previously, as the Manager of Policy & Partnerships, with the Coalition for Community Schools, she was responsible for partnership development and management at the local and national levels; federal and state policy coordination; and helping develop federal policy recommendations and briefs.

Ana Maria Argilagos
President and CEO
Hispanics in Philanthropy

Ana Marie Argilagos is President and CEO of Hispanics in Philanthropy—a vast network of donors building, funding and fueling Latino power across the Americas. Before coming to HIP, Ana Marie was a senior advisor at the Ford Foundation where she worked on urban development strategies to expand economic opportunity and advance sustainability across the world. She also spent eight years as a senior program officer at the Annie E. Casey Foundation where she spearheaded the foundation’s work in rural areas, indigenous communities, and the US-Mexico border region. Ana Marie’s successful track record working across a broad range of capacities — adjunct professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, educational programs manager at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, director of the New Workplace for Women Project at the National Council of La Raza (now UnidosUS), and deputy director of Ayuda, a legal clinic serving immigrants in Washington, DC —marks a professional trajectory as an entrepreneurial thinker bridging diverse agendas and achieving results.

In addition to her career spanning philanthropy, academia and the nonprofit sectors, Ana Marie was appointed to serve in the federal government during two Presidential Administrations. Most recently as Deputy Chief of Staff at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development where she created the Office for International and Philanthropic Innovation to scale collaboration between the public and philanthropic sectors. That model of sourcing innovation and leveraging partnerships from broad global networks is now being successfully replicated at other federal cabinet agencies.

Ana Marie has been recognized for her creativity and bold vision with numerous awards. She currently serves on the boards of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, CANDID, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, PoderLatinx, and the Santa Fe Community Foundation.

She received her master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University and her bachelor’s degree in international relations from American University.

She divides her time between Santa Fe, NM and Washington DC. In her free time you’ll often find her out hiking with her husband Rodger Boyd; hanging out with her daughter Alexia or at the beach with her family in Puerto Rico.

Kathleen Enright
President and CEO
Council on Foundations

Widely respected for her role in creating a more robust, effective philanthropic and nonprofit sector over two decades as a mission-driven leader and coalition builder, Kathleen Enright joins the Council after 17 years as President and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). During her tenure, she guided GEO to a programmatically strong and financially healthy position, experience she brings to her new role leading the Council on Foundations.

Previously, Ms. Enright served as the group director of marketing and communications for BoardSource, a project manager for the National Association of Development Organizations Research Foundation, and communications specialist for Lexmark International. In 2007, Ms. Enright received the Distinguished Public Service Award from the George Washington University Chapter of Pi Alpha Alpha, a public administration honor society. She holds a bachelors degree in English from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s of public administration from The George Washington University.

Ms. Enright co-chaired the Vision Design Group of the United Philanthropy Forum (formerly the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers) and has served on the advisory boards of The Center for Effective Philanthropy and the Midge Smith Center for Evaluation Effectiveness. She previously served on Independent Sector’s Building Value Together Committee and the selection committee of the Washington Post Nonprofit Excellence Award.

Ms. Enright speaks and writes regularly on issues of non-profit and grantmaker effectiveness at national and regional gatherings of executives and trustees.

Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen
Co-Interim Executive Director; Chief Program Officer
Grantmakers for Education

Ulcca has been an educator for more than twenty years, committed to transforming American education in ways that ensure that all students have access to learning experiences that help them achieve their unique potential by meeting their developmental and learning needs. She is the child of two immigrants from Tanzania who began school as an English language learner. With the support of amazing educators, she ended up being the first in her family to graduate from a four-year college program. Her experiences fuel her desire to interrogate and advocate for an expanded vision of what it means to ensure every child has access to a high-quality education. She is committed to ensuring that the voices of diverse learners and communities are represented in conversations about these issues. Ulcca began her career as an elementary school teacher in Newark Public Schools, and went on to build a career that has included leading nonprofit programs, conducting research, engaging in advocacy and shaping policy. She understands the power of philanthropic investment to influence the direction and work of the education sector, and believes that catalyzing the wisdom of collective networks is one of the best ways to accelerate shifts in strategy and responsiveness, and to increase overall impact. An internationally-recognized expert on educational transformation at the level of instruction, assessment, organizational design and policy systems, Ulcca has addressed audiences at conferences including World EduLead, SxSW Education and iNACOL, and has presented twice at TEDx events. Her new book, The Future of Smart, will be released in Fall 2021. Ulcca earned her Ph.D. (DPhil) in education and philosophy from Oxford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She has been recognized nationally for her work and commitment to public service through education as a 1997 Harry S. Truman Scholar; a 2001 British Marshall Scholar; and a 2005 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.