Currently, Chris is collaboratively incubating a new national coalition-based initiative to create a lateral-thinking based innovation hub and “greenhouse” to identify, iterate & nurture higher reward, conventional wisdom challenging ideas and solutions that hold the potential to spark catalytic “Butterfly Effect” level change that can be broadly scaled for the public good.  Additionally, Chris is part of the Beyond100K Strategic Advisory and an active board member at Arbor Rising.  Most recently, Chris completed 2 back to back “tour of duties;”  the second was heading up R&D for K-12 Education and cross division AI Strategy for the US Program at the Gates Foundation; the first was serving as the Director of Educational Technology and Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Innovation & Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education working in conjunction with the White House and CDC during the height of the pandemic in order to help pivot and reimagine emergency COVID efforts surrounding remote and hybrid learning and to advance policy and pass congressional funding to dramatically accelerate the pace at which the U.S. invents, identifies, develops and scales solutions to educations most important and persistent challenges. (e.g. CHIPS+ Act, NEEDS ACT & NCADE)

Most notably prior, Chris co-founded New Classrooms/Teach to One, a national nonprofit focused on the creation of personalized learning models, including leading the design and implementation of School of One, named one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of the Year; worked in the Office of Accountability at the NYC Department of Education; launched an ed-tech consulting services practice at Amplify Education; specialized in IT development at IBM; founded a pair of startups during the dotcom bubble; & taught Earth Sciences for Upper Dublin (PA) School District’s Robbins Park Environmental Center. Chris is an alum of the Pahara/Aspen Institute, serves on a number of non-profit boards and is a recurring university guest lecturer at Stanford & Harvard Business Schools. Chris lives just outside of NYC with his wife and two children.