Welcome to the Grantmakers for Education Board

Gisele Shorter
Raikes Foundation
Program Officer, Education

Gisele joined the Raikes Foundation as an education strategy program officer in 2018. She leads the national School and System Redesign Portfolio and supports K-12 policy efforts. The heartbeat of her K-12 portfolio is the Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) Network. Collectively the BELE membership leverages their resources to develop an education system that ensures the intellectual, social, emotional, and cultural growth and wellbeing of all young people and results in social-cultural markers having zero negative predictive power on outcomes.

Over the past 15 years, Gisele has led large-scale and community-based programmatic, research and policy initiatives to advance justice and equity, close health disparities, and ensure access and opportunities for BIPOC youth to excel. Her work is rooted in a deep belief that an equitable society starts with an equitable education system.

Dr. Shorter earned her Ed.D. in health education from Columbia University Teachers College. She holds an M.P.A. from Long Island University and a B.A. from Amherst College. She is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow of the Aspen Institute.