As an organization led by those who have walked in our students’ shoes, we know firsthand the life-transforming benefits of a college degree.
As an organization led by those who have walked in our students’ shoes, we know firsthand the life-transforming benefits of a college degree.
Bold, innovative, committed, diverse. The Beyond 12 team is a mighty force that draws on our own experiences and expertise to provide students – and their institutions – with the information and support they need to succeed.
Alex has more than 18 years of executive management and strategic development experience in both the nonprofit and private sectors. Immediately before launching Beyond 12, she was an Entrepreneur in Residence at NewSchools Venture Fund where she conducted the research and developed the business plan for Beyond 12. Alex's previous professional experience includes serving as executive director of The Princeton Review's Silicon Valley office, co-founder and vice president of marketing and online strategy at educational travel startup Explorica, director of operations at EF Education, and operations manager at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where she coordinated the efforts of an international youth substance abuse prevention foundation.
Alex was also the executive director of Foundation for a College Education (FCE). She currently serves on the FCE advisory board, as well as the board of directors of the Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center. Alex received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and earned a master's degree with a concentration in policy and organizational leadership from Stanford. She is an Ashoka Fellow, a recipient of the 2011 NewSchools Venture Fund Entrepreneur of the year award, and a 2012 Jefferson Award for Public Service. In addition, Fast Company recently named Beyond 12 “one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in education.”
Ethan Beard is the co-founder of Yoz Labs. A longtime tech executive and entrepreneur, Ethan has focused on the intersection of technology companies and their partners including leading Ripple’s blockchain developer program, the Facebook Developer Network and New Business Development at Google. He is also an active investor in and advisor to early stage technology startups and was an EIR at Greylock Partners. Ethan lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children and is an active philanthropist supporting organizations in contemporary art, education, and democracy reform.
Angela’s career started in the private sector leading business development for organizations like Viacom and Nokia. While working internationally, she began to wonder: if multinational companies can deliver their products consistently and with quality at scale, what would it take to deliver social interventions like education and health in a similar manner?
She began to tackle this question by founding Global Language Project, a social venture that aimed to transform how we prepare students with skills to succeed in a global economy and workforce. Angela completed a Doctoral degree at Harvard University, where her focus was on this question, along with the role of scale and strategic capital deployment and philanthropy in systems change initiatives.
Angela’s work with New Profit allowed her to marry her research interests with practice. She led New Profit's $15M Future of Work global fund to invest in entrepreneurs and companies developing innovative technical solutions to upskill low-income and entry-level workers at scale. Angela recently launched a $6 million Future of Work Grand Challenge, powered by XPRIZE and MIT Solve, to rapidly reskill 25,000 displaced workers into living-wage jobs in the next 24 months. Her work and writing has been featured in CNN, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, Stanford Social Innovation Review and Harvard Business Review. You can read her thoughts on the intersection of race and the Future of Work on Medium and follow her on Twitter at @angjack.
Renuka Kher has supported entrepreneurial efforts in under-resourced communities for her entire career. She has spent 16 years in philanthropy and helped direct over $100M through various roles. Her professional experience spans the public, private, philanthropic and non-profit sectors. She has served on the board of and as an advisor to many of the nation’s leading social change organizations including, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Beyond 12, Year Up, Global Citizen Year and Revolution Foods.
Most recently, she served on the executive team of Tipping Point Community a nonprofit grant-making organization that fights poverty in the Bay Area. During her six year tenure at Tipping Point she helped lead the growth of the organization as its Chief Operating Officer and also founded T Lab, Tipping Point's R+D engine.
Before joining Tipping Point, Renuka served as a Principal at NewSchools Venture Fund whose work is focused on education and prior to that she was a Senior Program Officer at the Robin Hood Foundation where her work included developing and implementing a strategy for a $65 million relief fund, one of the nation's largest, created to respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
Her work has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, OZY, and Social Startup Success. Renuka received her bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Michigan, and completed her graduate work at Emory University, where she received a master's in public health from the Rollins School of Public Health. She is an alumnus of the Coro Leadership Program and also holds a certificate in Innovation Leadership from California College of the Arts. She currently lives in Oakland with her husband and two young children.
Deborah has been committed to transforming the lives of underserved urban school students for more than four decades. In 1993, Deborah became the first public school superintendent to join Edison Learning (formerly Edison Schools). There, she held numerous positions including, President of Edison Teachers College, Executive Vice President of Charter Schools, and Executive Vice President of several external relations functions. Prior to joining Edison Learning, Deborah served as the first female General Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools. Crain’s Detroit Business named her Newsmaker of the Year for 1992. Before that, she was the first female Assistant Superintendent in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the first female Deputy Superintendent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was a teacher and administrator in the New York City Public Schools for more than a decade. Deborah is the former President of the Education Industry Association. In addition to serving on the boards of several high-performing charter management organizations, she is the Chair of the board of Beyond 12. She serves on the executive committee of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Policy Innovators in Education Network, and is a founder and national board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. She also serves on the advisory board of the Games and Learning Publishing Council, Hechinger Report, Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and is a member of the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education. Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Norfolk State University, a master’s degree in education with a specialization in reading pedagogy from Queens College of the City University of New York, and a doctorate in Administration, Policy and Urban Education from Fordham University.
Tulaine Montgomery is an entrepreneur, educator, writer and organizer. She has played leadership roles in the launch and expansion of social enterprises across the U.S., the Caribbean, East Africa, Indonesia and South Africa.
Tulaine currently serves as Co-CEO of New Profit, a venture philanthropy organization that backs visionary leaders who are scaling innovations and transforming our nation’s most important and often inequitable systems. During her time at New Profit, Tulaine has led initiatives focused on strengthening education-to-employment pathways for underserved youth, driving resources and support to entrepreneurs who have been directly impacted by the American legal system, and building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization and philanthropic sector. Tulaine has also served as the lead architect of New Profit’s Inclusive Impact strategy and Proximate Capital fund, which seeks to bridge the resource gap faced by Black, Latino/a/x, Indigenous, rural and other underinvested social entrepreneurs.
Outside of New Profit, Tulaine is a trusted advisor to nonprofit organizations and socially responsible companies, and serves as the Board Chair for GirlTrek, the largest public health nonprofit for African-American women and girls in the nation. Her other board positions include Beyond 12, YouthBuild, College for Social Innovation, and Jitegemee (a youth-serving organization in Kenya). She is also the Host and Executive Producer of "Say More: Live conversations with Tulaine,” an Instagram Live virtual ‘salon’ that explores what it would take to build a world that works for everyone.
Tulaine’s writing has been featured in Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Root, Worth Media, and more. She has a master’s in public policy from Tufts University and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College.
Tulaine is an experienced cellist and writer; she has written and produced five original plays.
Scott is an entrepreneur and builder who is passionate about empowering purpose-driven leaders, organizations, and communities to reach their full potential for impact. Scott founded Education Pioneers in 2003 to build a diverse network of leaders dedicated to transforming education so that all students receive a quality education. He served as CEO for 15 years while raising $40M+ from national funders and leading the organization's recruitment and training of 4,000+ leaders to drive impact at 750+ education organizations serving millions of students. Scott currently serves as the head of employer partnerships at Springboard, a mission-driven company that is bridging the world's skills gap by offering transformative online education experiences in tech-related fields such as data science, UI/UX design, machine learning, and software engineering. Scott has also served in a variety of roles at pioneering education organizations during his career, including teacher at St. Jude High School, in-house counsel at Aspire Public Schools, and founding talent leader at Wonderschool. Scott graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in government from the University of Notre Dame, received his Master of Arts in teaching from the University of Portland, and earned his law degree from Stanford Law School. He is a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur, a board member of Beyond 12, an advisor at BookNook, a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow, Class of 2010, and the recipient of the 2017 Notre Dame Award for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Education.
Shonda is an award-winning writer, director, and producer who created the hit ABC series Grey's Anatomy and Scandal. Shonda also created the Grey's Anatomy spinoff series, Private Practice, which ran on ABC for six seasons. Now in its eleventh season, Grey's Anatomy continues to be hailed by audiences and critics. For her work on the series, Shonda received the 2007 Television Producer of the Year award from the Producers Guild of America, the 2007 Golden Globe for Outstanding Television Drama, the 2007 Lucy Award for Excellence in Television from Women in Film, consecutive wins from 2007-2011 for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series as well as five wins for Outstanding Drama Series, the 2006 Writers Guild Award for Best New Series, in addition to Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series and Writing for a Drama Series. For Scandal, Shonda was the 2013 winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Drama Series as well as nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Shonda was the recipient of the 2012 GLAAD Golden Gate Award, 2010 RAINN Hope Award and a 2009 GLSEN Respect Awards Honoree. Shonda has twice been included in TIME Magazine's 100 list of the most influential people. Shonda holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College in English Literature with Creative Writing and an M.F.A. from the USC School of Cinema-Television, where she was awarded the prestigious Gary Rosenberg Writing Fellowship. The child of educators, Rhimes blames her parents for her rampant addiction to books. The youngest of six, she was born and raised outside of Chicago, IL, and now resides in Los Angeles with her three daughters.
Natalie Walrond brings to her work twenty-five years of experience in K- 12 education, finance, and strategy, for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Walrond serves as senior managing director at WestEd. In this role she leads the vision, strategic direction, and external engagement of the center. Walrond leads a team of 17 people who work nationally to build state and local capacity to integrate evidence-based approaches to social and emotional development and school safety with academic teaching and learning, school climate and culture, and all of the ways that children and youth experience school. Walrond speaks and writes for the Center on social and emotional well- being, excellence, alignment and coherence, and equity.
Walrond began her career in investment management and investment banking. After ten years, she served as a nonprofit chief financial officer, before becoming an associate partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. Prior to joining WestEd, she was an independent consultant for several years serving mission-driven education organizations, providing strategic planning, financial strategy, and board effectiveness consulting. She earned a B.A. in international studies and international business from Trinity University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, with concentrations in analytic finance and policy studies. She earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1999. Walrond has served on several boards and is currently a member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC).
Atta Diop is originally from Atlanta, Georgia and is a junior at Ohio State University currently pursuing a B.S. in public health with a specialization in sociology on a pre-law track. She is also actively pursuing double minors in business and the legal foundations of society. She is working to become an advocate for those neglected and marginalized. She plans to use her degree to satisfy aspirations of bridging the gap between healthcare and advocacy with an overall goal of increasing the affordability and accessibility to vital healthcare resources. She believes providing equitable and effective healthcare is the key to the progression of any community and would like to use law and policy implementation as her pathway for helping achieve these outcomes.
Caitlin Basas is a second year undergraduate student at UC Irvine, and is serving as a member of Beyond 12’s Student Advisory Board. In school, she is pursuing a bachelor’s of science degree in psychology and a bachelor’s of arts degree in education sciences. On campus, she is an active member of UCI’s Filipino cultural organization, Kababayan, and Pilipinx pre-health association, PUSO. In the past few years, she has developed a passion for education while working as an elementary school volunteer and academic tutor with Teach for America. As one of the first people in her family to go to college in the United States, Caitlin hopes that in her role with Beyond 12 she can help provide effective resources to first generation students who yearn to receive a higher education. Using the skills learned in college and Beyond 12, she yearns to pursue a career in school psychology or pediatric therapy.
Jennifer Rojas is a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, and is majoring in rhetoric. At UC Berkeley, Jennifer serves as the chief communications officer for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), where she facilitates all communications regarding the Association. This includes creating partnerships with both on and off-campus stakeholders to bring new opportunities and resources to students. On top of maintaining the ASUC’s public relations, Jennifer also manages the content being produced on all ASUC platforms. In this capacity, she dives into a creative space and creates unique digital media, as well as author statements regarding current ASUC affairs. Jennifer also works at UC Berkeley’s Student Learning Center as a Peer Tutor in the writing department, where she helps students navigate the learning process and fosters an environment that encourages student-led learning. Prior to transferring to UC Berkeley, Jennifer attended Chabot College where she received an associate of arts for transfer in psychology.
Jordyn Patterson is a driven junior majoring in political science and on the pre-law track. She hails from the vibrant city of Chicago, Illinois and is currently enrolled at the prestigious Spelman College, where she has not only been a diligent student but has also achieved numerous accomplishments. Her dedication shines through her participation in SKIRTS, Spel Reads, and Event Envoys. Notably, she serves as the co-sos chair of NCNW (National Council Of Negro Women) and holds the esteemed position of president for the Spelman Chapter of Breaking The Cycle. In addition, she is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., exemplifying her commitment to both personal growth and community involvement. Jordyn's commitment to excellence extends beyond the campus, as she embarked on a transformative summer internship with Target. As an executive team leader, she delved into the managerial and business aspects of the company, showcasing her aptitude for leadership and business acumen. Her hard work and dedication paid off, as she not only successfully completed her internship but also received an offer to return next summer. Jordyn's journey is an inspiring testament to her dedication, leadership, and ambition. She is undoubtedly a rising star with a bright future ahead.
Niyat Asefaw is a sophomore at Duke University double majoring in public policy and statistics with a minor in computer science. In school, she holds multiple leadership positions, some of which include being the president of her dormitory of over 440 students, an elected student serving on the International students' advisory board, and the head of programming for the Ethiopian/Eritrean affinity group on campus. She is also a scholar in the prestigious Alice M. Baldwin program that aims to empower its female-identified undergraduate students to become connected leaders in the Duke community. Additionally, as a Dream Scholar, Niyat has made creative contributions to engage students in pursuing higher education in the larger Virginia/DC/Maryland area. Last summer, Niyat interned at the Lower Eastside Girls Club in New York City, a non-profit that connects girls and young women to programs in the arts, sciences, leadership, entrepreneurship, and wellness. There, she closely collaborated with the director of strategy and communications, co-executive director, and program staff to perform a variety of tasks that included analyzing survey patterns and writing guides to be utilized by the organization, students, and community members.
Talib Spearman, a passionate civil engineering student, hails from the vibrant city of Atlanta, Georgia and is currently pursuing his academic aspirations at the esteemed University of Georgia, immersing himself in the fascinating world of civil engineering. Talib’s academic journey is guided by his determination to make a tangible impact on the world through the development of sustainable and innovative infrastructure. In addition to his studies, he proudly serves as a student advisory board member at Beyond 12. In this role he blends his passion for education with his desire to uplift and support fellow students on their academic journeys. Beyond academics and professional pursuits, Talib is deeply passionate about fostering a sense of community and positive change. He envisions a world where inclusive and equitable opportunities are accessible to all, and is dedicated to being a part of that change.
Trinitii Baggett is a full-time college student involved in student organizations such as Active Minds, a national mental health awareness organization, and the Decatur Preventative College Action Team as a peer health educator. In her commitment to wellness, Trinitii co-leads the Scotties of Color Healing Circle which is a group that supports students on campus by discussing topics related to identity and mental health. Trinitii is working on a psychology research project on “Employees with ambivalent supervisors: Perceived support and job satisfaction.” Also, the project will be presented at the Spring Annual Research Conference at Agnes Scott College in April 2024. Before Beyond 12, Trinitii worked on the At-Promise Youth Council as vice president in partnership with the Atlanta Police Foundation’s mission to organize community day events to provide inner-city youth with academic, social, and job opportunities. Dedication to community involvement and mental health advocacy is an important part of Trinitii’s beliefs. As a senior in high school, Trinitii was a staff writer for her school’s newspaper The Warrior Wire. Trinitii serves as the at-large senator for the Class of 2026 on the Student Government Association. She majors in psychology at Agnes Scott College and is expected to graduate in the fall of 2026.