Chris currently heads up R&D for K-12 Education at the Gates Foundation where he is responsible for R&D related innovation activities, strategy and investments to drive transformative progress surrounding equity and student achievement. Most recently, Chris served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Innovation & Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education working w/ the White House and others to advance policy and pass congressional funding to dramatically accelerate the pace at which the U.S. invents, identifies, develops, & scales solutions to education’s most important and persistent challenges. Earlier, he served as the Department’s Director of Educational Technology to help pivot emergency COVID efforts surrounding remote learning and student access to broadband and devices; as well as represented the U.S. at G20 digital learning & AI working sessions.

Most notably, Chris co-founded New Classrooms/Teach to One, a national nonprofit focused on the creation of personalized learning models, including School of One, named one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of the Year. Earlier in his career, Chris 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 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.