SoLD Leadership & Team Members

Brigid Ahern is the Executive Director of the Center for Whole-Child Education, a part of Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (formerly known as Turnaround for Children). From 2018 until the transition of the Center to ASU in…

Pamela Cantor, M.D. is a child and adolescent psychiatrist specializing in trauma, author, and thought leader on the science of learning and development and unlocking human potential. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, she founded Turnaround for Children, now…

Linda Darling-Hammond, President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as the faculty sponsor of…

Merita is a chief architect of both the Forum and its signature initiative, Ready by 21®. Having founded the Forum with Karen Pittman in 1998, she is managing partner of Big Picture Approach Training & Consulting and a coach to…

Bethany Little is a Principal at EducationCounsel, where she supports foundations, districts, states, institutions of higher education, education associations, and other nonprofits in driving systems change to improve equity and education from early childhood through higher education. Little has spent…

David Osher is vice president and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Osher is an expert on violence prevention, school safety, supportive school discipline, conditions for learning and school climate, social and emotional learning, youth development, cultural…

Scott Palmer is co-founder and managing partner of EducationCounsel, a mission-based organization that works with leading nonprofits, foundations, and policymakers to identify and advance systemic changes that can dramatically improve education equity and outcomes. Palmer provides policy, legal, strategy, and…

Karen Pittman has made a career of starting organizations and initiatives that promote youth development – including the Forum for Youth Investment, which she co-founded with Merita Irby in 1998. A sociologist and recognized leader in youth development, Karen started…

Todd Rose is the director of the Mind, Brain, & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also leads the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual. His work is focused on the intersection of the…