Senior School Support Strategist, XQ Institute
Monica Martinez is an expert in high school redesign. She is the Senior School Strategist at the XQ Institute, an initiative of the Emerson Collective, an author of a book, Deeper Learning, was an appointee by President Obama to the White House Commission on Excellence for Hispanic Education, and Senior Fellow to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She has also served as a consultant for philanthropic organizations and non-profits, the President of the New Tech Network, Vice President for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and a senior associate at the Institute for Educational Leadership where she founded the National High School Alliance while managing multiple projects.
Monica’s career encompasses major programmatic, management, and executive leadership roles and is marked both by her knowledge of secondary reform and college readiness and hands-on experience managing and supporting major foundation initiatives. She is an international and national speaker on the topics on high school innovation, college readiness, and the future of learning. She is on the Board of Directors for the Marin Humane Society and Learning Forward, a national organization devote to professional learning for student success. Previous to that, she served on the boards for 10,000 Degrees, a college access organization; AdvancED, an international accreditation agency, and Youth Leadership Institute (San Francisco/Marin); Grantmakers for Education, and A Better Chance. She has been a Commissioner for the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF); served on the TeachNY Advisory Council formed by the Chancellor of SUNY (State University of New York System) and the NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel focused on the Future of Teacher Preparation. She was named Distinguished Alumni for the Steinhardt School of Education and Human Development in 2017.