The Stronger Podcast

Public schools still look much the way they did around 1910, and as enrollment falls, Jason Willis wants states to help districts rethink them rather than simply shrink them.   In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Jason, a senior policy fellow at WestEd, a national nonprofit that works on education and human development, and a clinical professor of public policy at...

A fourth grade teacher once told the whole class to circle white on a standardized test, then stopped to tell Kat Ling to circle Asian, and today Kat leads a Denver nonprofit and never wants anyone in it to feel that left out. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Kat, CEO of Moonshot edVentures, a Denver nonprofit that backs leaders of color and other historically m...

A social worker once walked Taylor Ramsey's mother from high school dropout to technical degree, and today Taylor leads OneGoal Georgia, which does the same for students across the state. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Taylor, Executive Director of OneGoal Georgia, a nonprofit that builds postsecondary advising into the school day, to talk about getting studen...

Anthony Dorado's road back to the program that trained him began when a busy CEO made time for him, and now he tries to give fifteen minutes to anyone who reaches out. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Anthony, Executive Director of City Teaching Alliance in Greater DC Metro, a nonprofit that prepares teachers for city schools, to talk about changing careers and...

Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn, Executive Director of Teach For America Indianapolis, says believing in kids is only the start. The work is turning that belief into clear goals and measurable action for students. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Tenika to talk about how leaders get built in Indianapolis and why teaching may be the best training ground there is. Tenika...

Joy Osborne, President and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, says the Common Core era made instructional materials better across the country. Student outcomes have not caught up, and the next decade of her work is about finding out why. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Joy, a former teacher and principal who now leads the national nonprofit founded by the pri...

Shruti Sehra leads New Profit, a national venture philanthropy, through what she calls the largest global realignment of our lifetimes, driven by rapid innovation and an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth . She is clear that nobody can predict how it ends. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Shruti Sehra, CEO of New Profit, the national nonprofit th...

Leticia de la Vara, Chief Impact and Operating Officer at New Politics, spent their school years in the part of the education data nobody writes reports about: the middle. That middle is huge, and Leticia argues it is where the gains are. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Leticia to talk about the move from community organizing to the C-suite, and why servant lea...

Dr. Daniel Custódio's research found that Latino professionals plan further ahead than their peers in corporate America, and that the culture they were told to leave at the door is the asset that carries them. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Daniel, transformation executive, professor, and author of Code Mastering, to talk about turning a dissertation into a ma...

Teacher attendance is the clearest early warning sign of teacher turnover, and Dr. Tommy Chang, CEO of New Teacher Center, says most school systems are not watching it. He was not watching it either when he ran Boston Public Schools. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Dr. Tommy Chang, CEO of New Teacher Center and former Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, to...

Jesse Melgares runs a TK-12 charter school network in South Los Angeles, and he argues teacher retention is not a teacher problem. It is a systems problem, and most school systems never built the systems. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Jesse, CEO of The Accelerated Schools, to talk about making good instruction repeatable instead of lucky. Jesse grew up in Eas...

Economic mobility programs usually arrive with a plan for parents. Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio starts by believing them. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio, Executive Director of LIFT-DC, to talk about what it takes to break the cycle of poverty. LIFT treats parents as the CEOs of the household and pairs direct cash with financial coaching. Over 90...

Dr. Tara Raines chairs the board of a Las Vegas charter school that just separated from its New York management network, and she is rebuilding it around the rule she keeps for herself: noses in, fingers out. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Tara, board chair of DPAC Nevada and Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Ballmer Institute for Children's Behavio...

  Education leader Bill Kurtz spent twenty years building DSST Public Schools into one of Denver's top performing charter networks, then spent nine months learning how not to be it. His warning to the sector: we are not getting twenty year leaders anymore, and it is not because they do not want to stay.   In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Bill, founding CEO of DS...

Charter schools have been legal in Washington for just over a decade, and Excellent Schools Washington founder Julie Kennedy has a blunt read on why the start was rocky. The sector decided Washington was different from everywhere else, and then hit every headwind other states had already worked through. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Julie, Executive Director...

Tess Vigil has had her role reduced or eliminated four times, and she will tell you none of it was failure. It was clarity. From a Los Angeles dress company to culturally responsive education to AI enablement in healthcare, her career is a case study in letting go of what looks impressive to chase what actually feels purposeful. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with...

Ten percent of Utah's children were using roughly ninety percent of the state's behavioral health funding, and no one system owned them. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Denise Jensen, LMSW, Partner and Lead Operating Officer at Stronger Consulting, and the founding director of Utah's children's system of care. Denise grew up as the oddball in a family of seven...

Dr. Aidé Acosta went from a first-generation college student navigating higher education without a map to the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at National Louis University. Her guiding line comes from her Sinaloan roots: like a turtle, she carries home on her back, and she has built her career making sure students never have to leave theirs behind. In this episode of The Str...

Bobby Blount has served on the Northside ISD school board for 27 years, and he has spent every one of them refusing to get distracted from the one thing that matters: whether kids actually have a shot. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Bobby Blount, a Northside Independent School District trustee, President of the Texas Caucus of Black School Board Members, and a...

Relational intelligence may be the one advantage humans keep as AI gets smarter, and Dr. Jennifer Brown has spent 25 years proving it builds stronger teams. A regional superintendent at the KIPP Foundation, she coaches CEOs and executive directors on what really makes a team work. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Dr. Jennifer Brown, Regional Superintendent at th...

Ashley Heard has spent eight years making the case for intentionally diverse charter schools, and she is more convinced than ever that they matter right now. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Ashley Heard, Development and External Affairs Lead at the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, for a conversation that is about much more than charter schools. It is about wh...

Education leader Erik Greenberg never planned to work in schools. Now, as CEO of Academies of Math and Science, he argues that the answer to America's education problem is not innovation. It is relationships, retention, and the slow work of building community schools in the neighborhoods that need them most. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Erik, CEO of Academie...

From classroom teacher to founder of a cradle to career movement, Dominique Lee built the BRICK Education Network in Newark to do what schools alone never could: support a child and their family from before birth all the way through a career. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Dominique Lee, founder and CEO of BRICK Education Network, to talk about what it actuall...

Ethan Ashley got handcuffed at a police precinct at age six for stealing a pack of gum. He went on to finish high school at sixteen, earn a law degree from Howard by twenty-two, win an elected school board seat, and build a national organization that trains the people deciding what happens in your kid's classroom. His throughline: his story should have been the rule, not the exception. In this epi...

Catherine Suitor has spent two decades proving that schools can get better at scale, and she has the data to back it up.   As Executive Director of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools Foundation, Catherine has helped Alliance grow into one of the largest and most successful nonprofit charter networks in the country, serving 13,000 scholars across 26 schools in Los Angeles. When Alliance open...