EDBUILD - Key Persons
Angelia began her career in private practice at large New York City law firms and then transitioned into the nonprofit sector focusing on social justice and ensuring equal rights for all. It is this commitment to equity that led her to education reform, and to serve on the founding board of EdBuild.
Currently, she serves as the General Counsel for StudentsFirst, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that every student has access to great schools and great teachers. Before moving west, Angelia worked in the in-house counsel's office for the American Civil Liberties Union. She also teaches Non-Profit Organizations at UC Davis School of Law.
Angelia received her law degree from Columbia Law School and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.
Job Titles:
- Notable Former Staff Member
- Co - Founder and Chief of Staff, Who Was Instrumental in Creating the Operational Structure, Public Voice, and Spirit
Cecilia worked on the data team to analyze the state funding systems. She came to EdBuild after graduating with a masters degree in environmental policy and management. Her prior work focused on mapping vulnerability in urban food systems. While at EdBuild, Cecilia built interactive modeling tools to make recommendations for school funding reforms in several states and developed the Data Dashboard, a dynamic platform which allows users to explore school district demographics and finances through customizable tables and plots. She also contributed to analysis and visualization for a number of research projects including 23 Billion and Dividing Lines through the creation of a COVID-19 school district database.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of NYCAN
Derrell believes that every child should have the opportunity to succeed, and was drawn to EdBuild's commitment to breaking down barriers to access.
Derrell is currently the Executive Director of NYCAN: The New York Campaign for Achievement Now, an advocacy group fighting to enact research-based education reforms that will give every child access to a great school. Prior to this, Derrell led other organizations fighting for educational equity, including Better Education for Kids and Excellent Education for Everyone (E3) in New Jersey.
Derrell frequently contributes to education reform debates across print, web, and TV media. He also serves on several other boards dedicated to putting the needs of students and families first, including Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City, We Can Do Better New Jersey, and St. Anthony High School in Jersey City.
A native of Baltimore, Derrell attended the St. Paul's School for Boys and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a B.A. in English.
Job Titles:
- Principal at 270 Strategies
Hari is a former middle school teacher, who left the classroom for law school so he could have a bigger effect in our nation's classrooms.
A communications expert, Hari is currently a Principal at 270 Strategies, advising some of the country's most important and successful grassroots campaigns.
Prior to joining 270 Strategies, Hari was the National Press Secretary at the Democratic National Committee and senior spokesman for Obama for America. More recently, Hari helped a national, non-profit education reform advocacy group get off the ground, guided a political campaign in Asia to victory, and helped run a high profile campaign in the New York City municipal primaries. He has been named "Top 50 Politicos to Watch."
Before he worked in politics and advocacy, Hari was an attorney and a middle school teacher in New York City. He has a J.D. from Northwestern University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer for the Washington Convention Center Authority
Henry Mosley was the financial advisor to an administration the focused on the rebirth of a city. His career in economic development highlights one fundamental truth: that great communities can't exist without great schools.
Currently the chief financial officer for the Washington Convention Center Authority, Henry oversees all matters relative to the WCCA's budget, accounting, and revenue operations.
Before that, Henry was responsible for all aspects of financial management for the District's 16 economic development and regulation agencies, when he served as associate CFO for the Economic Development and Regulation Cluster. Prior to joining the District government in 1999, Mosley served as the CFO for a local law firm, and directed the start-up operation of a major university's multi-specialty medical facility.
Mosley holds an MBA from Willamette University and a B.A. in business management and an A.S. degree in computer science from Loma Linda University.
Since education spending comprises at least 1/3 of all state budgets, Josh understands that without reforming school finance, we'll never create a sustainable domestic economy.
Currently the senior vice president of results-driven government at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Josh's work focuses on the issues of sustainable public finance and evidence-based policymaking with a particular emphasis on retirement and education policy. Josh has also served an adjunct faculty member at Rice University where he has taught in the Summer Institute for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program at the Jones Graduate School of Business.
Job Titles:
- Notable Former Staff Member
Job Titles:
- Developer
- Senior Developer
Marc DePoe joined EdBuild because he knows that a quality education is a fundamental right for every student. Working as EdBuild's Developer, Marc plays a crucial role in developing and maintaining our database architecture, and translating our policy ideas into interactive solutions for our stakeholders. Prior to his work at EdBuild, Marc worked with diverse and well-known clients such as UnitedHealthCare, Vice Media, and The White House, where he oversaw the development and launch of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Cities, Towns and Counties initiative site.
As Chief Program Officer, Matt was second in command and consigliere to the Chief Executive. He was deeply involved in EdBuild's state engagement work, leading government and advocate consulting efforts to reform education funding state-by-state. He also provided solicited (and unsolicited) guidance on the production of research reports and associated data analyses.
Megan worked as part of the data team to uncover compelling patterns and trends in the ways schools are funded. She came to EdBuild as a former high school mathematics teacher in an under-resourced public school with dual masters degrees in economic theory and educational policy and leadership.
At EdBuild, she was responsible for the data analysis of many research products including the neighbor inequality analyses of Fault Lines and Dismissed, and the national revenue-sharing model Clean Slate. She also created the R packages edbuildr and edbuildmapr to automate the downloading and processing of school district data, perform spatial analysis, and create formatted tables and maps.
Rebecca Sibilia launched EdBuild in June of 2014. Prior to starting EdBuild, Rebecca served as the Chief Operating Officer and Vice President for Fiscal Strategy at StudentsFirst. In her fiscal strategy role, she led a team in analyzing per-pupil funding levels and state funding mechanisms that ensure "equity" and "adequacy" considerations. Her team also studied and made recommendations to state and district officials on directed reforms to support more innovative use of resources across the public education spectrum.
Prior to her work at StudentsFirst, she served as the Chief Financial Officer for the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education, where she oversaw the investment of more than $1 billion in local, state, and federal student funding and the calculation of per-student funding based on state policy priorities. In prior roles, she created congressionally funded education programs; held state and local education policy roles; and developed venture philanthropy programs to serve low-income students in accessing quality education in appropriate settings.
Rebecca holds a Bachelors degree in Political Science from Clemson University and an honorary fellowship in American Government from the University of South Carolina.
Job Titles:
- Director of Data & Visualizations
Sara led data analysis, research, and visualization at EdBuild. Prior to EdBuild, she had an environmental mapping consultancy and worked on projects with the United Nations Environment Programme, New York Hall of Science, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, among others. At EdBuild she contributed to all of EdBuild's data-driven reports, and succeeded in including a map in nearly every EdBuild release.
Sharon served as Operations Manager and Executive Assistant for Rebecca Sibilia at EdBuild. She managed day-to-day operations, provided support for research products, and copyedited all written materials. As a sounding board for project ideas, she helped shape EdBuild's message and ensured the organization's products were framed for the audience outside of education finance.
Yi worked on policy research and analysis for the National Voice team at EdBuild. Prior to joining EdBuild, Yi received a masters degree in philosophy and public policy, and assisted with research and speechwriting in the UK parliament on early education and other social policy issues.
During her time at EdBuild, Yi got into the weeds of school district border law, working on Fractured, a report highlighting school district secession efforts, and Frontier, a database of school district border laws. She also contributed to EdBuild's resources on school district funding formulas, FundEd and FundEd: Charters, and to a report on school funding reform, Making Change.
Zahava led policy research and analysis at EdBuild. She came to EdBuild after completing masters degrees in public administration and education policy. Her prior work focused on the human capital needs of high-need schools and districts, primarily through projects implemented as part of Race to the Top. At EdBuild, she participated in the production of a number of reports and research products, and led the study of state school funding formulas, resulting in the fifty-state formula database FundEd and a detailed set of model funding formula policies, presented in the report Common Sense and Fairness and the interactive web tool EdBuilder.