Our Organization
Who We Are
We are committed to profound systemic change. As a collective force—educators, advocates, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and community members—we fight for the aspirations of students and their families. Together, we shape the conversation about what's possible. From classrooms to districts to statehouses across America, we’re reimagining education to realize the day when every child has an equal opportunity to learn, to grow, to influence and to lead.
Significant progress in educational outcomes is happening in communities across the country. And TFA alumni and corps members are playing an essential role.
Our TFA Network
Teach For America is a community of changemakers and coalition-builders. We are leaders who teach, teachers who lead. Our network is large and growing every day.
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Through teaching in our public schools and partnering with children and families in communities that are most impacted by educational inequity, this network of changemakers is helping strengthen the education system and shape the future of our country.
Leadership
Teach For America is led by a national team and leadership teams within each region where we place corps members. This structure means that alumni and corps members may interact much more with their regional team than the national leaders.
Our leadership team includes individuals who have devoted their careers to ending educational inequity, many starting by serving as corps members in the classroom. They bring decades of experience from the education field and other fields that impact education.
Executive Cabinet
Elisa Villanueva Beard
Phoenix '98
Chief Executive Officer
Teach For America
Elisa Villanueva Beard is the CEO of Teach For America. Elisa’s passion for educational equity comes from personal experience. She grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and developed a deep commitment to Teach For America’s mission as a student at DePauw University, where she was one of just a few Mexican American students. Her journey with Teach For America started as a 1998 Phoenix corps member. Today, under her leadership, Teach For America corps members reach hundreds of thousands of students each year in nearly 2,000 schools across 37 states and the District of Columbia.
Dr. Barbara Logan Smith
Chief of Equity & Belonging
Teach For America
Barbara began her career in education as a teacher and administrator with Milwaukee Public Schools, and over two decades has developed the leadership capacity of students, parents, educators, administrators, and business executives.
Jemina Bernard
President and Chief Operations Officer
Teach For America
In all her roles and across all the organizations she has worked for, Jemina Bernard brings a passion for equity and social justice that is rooted in her own upbringing as an African-American, Puerto Rican woman who grew up in the South Bronx and went on to graduate from Ivy League schools.
Nafeesha Mitchell
Senior Vice President, Chief of Staff & Head of Enterprise Strategy
Nafeesha Mitchell currently serves as the Chief of Staff to the CEO of Teach For America (TFA). In this role, she supports the CEO and senior management team to execute the organizational vision and strategy as well as oversee the operational efficiency of the office of the CEO. Prior to this role, Nafeesha was Vice President of The Collective and an Executive Director in North Carolina. In addition to establishing a board that was over 50% stakeholders of color, she has previously coached aspiring leaders on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) through the Executive Director Fellowship.
Steve Majors
Executive Vice President, Chief External Affairs Officer
Teach For America
Steve Majors brings over two decades of experience in communications, marketing and media, most recently as VP, Marketing and Communications at Communities In Schools (CIS), a national nonprofit with 135 affiliates operating in 26 states.
Tracy-Elizabeth Clay
Executive Vice President, Operations & Chief People Officer
Tracy-Elizabeth earned her B.A. from Stanford and is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. After a federal clerkship with the Hon. Anne E. Thompson, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, Tracy-Elizabeth began her legal career at the Hogan Lovells law firm in Washington D.C. In 2001, Tracy-Elizabeth left private practice to join Teach For America’s national staff focused on local and state policy advocacy.
Adam Stanley
Advisor
Teach For America
Adam officially joined us in January 2022. He brings a robust and relevant set of experiences, skills, and capabilities to Teach For America. Adam comes to the organization after most recently leading as Global CIO and Chief Digital Officer at Cushman & Wakefield where he led a transformation over the past nearly 8 years.
Crystal Rountree
Metro Atlanta '03
Executive Vice President, Chief Development & Revenue Officer
Teach For America - National Development
Crystal Rountree is a Regional Field Executive who manages and supports a cohort of 10 executive directors across the country. She has been on staff at Teach For America since 2005 and most recently served as the Executive Director of our Charlotte-Piedmont Triad region where she successfully led the merger of our Charlotte and North Carolina Piedmont Triad regions in 2018. In that role, she led an operation of nearly 900 corps members and alumni across both communities.
Regional Leadership Teams
Teach For America has more than 50 regions, each led by an executive director and an advisory board. To learn more about our regional leadership and regional boards, visit our individual region websites.
National Board of Directors
Our National Board of Directors plays a critical role in developing Teach For America’s strategic plan and ensuring that we are able to meet the ambitious goals we set for ourselves.
Lifetime Directors
Our Lifetime Directors have played a critical role on our national board for many years. We are deeply grateful for the ongoing advice, support, and advocacy that they continue to provide.
National Advisory Board of The Collective
The Collective is Teach For America's association for alumni of color. The National Advisory Board of the Collective is composed of alumni of color who help lead national initiatives and provide strategic guidance to Teach For America's senior leadership.
The Diversity of Our Network
Today, Teach For America is a force of over 64,000 alumni and corps members working in over 9,000 schools nationwide in pursuit of systemic change. Each of us brings unique strengths to this work based on our identities and life experiences. Here’s a snapshot of this diversity in action.
Corps Member Diversity
We take pride in the diversity of our Corps Members across several demographics.
If you are interested in becoming a teacher with the Teach For America corps, we encourage you to join us or learn more about our application process.
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Staff Diversity
We are also committed to growing our diversity in hiring, both in our national organization and regional offices.
If you are interested in joining our staff, check out our Careers page.
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Our Community Alliances & Initiatives
At Teach For America, we value our partnerships with those united in our vision: students and their families, fellow educators, community leaders, and national organizations. Through our established National Community Alliances, we foster relationships and amplify opportunities for collective learning and impact as we work to improve educational outcomes for all.
The Community Alliances and Initiatives speak to our core of our mission, values, and deep commitment to pursuing the same diversity, equity, and inclusiveness we envision for the U.S. and its Indigenous Nations.
Asian American & Pacific Islander Alliances
Asian American & Pacific Islander Alliances
The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Alliances work alongside other organizations to deliver on the promise of equal opportunity for every child, grow the field of AAPI teachers, and raise awareness of the academic and socio-economic realities facing many AAPI students.
Black Community Alliance
Black Community Alliance
The Black Community Alliance is Teach For America’s national network of Black staff, alumni, corps members, external partners, and our allies who actively re-imagine and pursue the conditions necessary to create an equitable educational landscape for Black students, parents, communities, educators, practitioners, and advocates.
Latinx Alliances
Latinx Alliances
The Latinx Alliances strives to be one of the most connected, active, thriving, and culturally responsive Latinx leadership networks in pursuit of educational equity in the U.S. Comprised of over 5,000 Latinx corps members, alumni, and staff, the mission of the Latinx Alliance is to connect and forge pathways for members of the Latinx community to achieve their full educational, economic, and social potential.
National Prism Alliances
National Prism Alliances
Students of color, those from low-income areas, and those who identify as LGBTQ+ face oppression based on their multiple identities. Teach For America is committed to safety, fairness, and dignity for all students. That’s why we’re taking a stand.
Our National Prism Alliances aims to create a more intersectional movement to end educational inequity by encouraging more LGBTQ+ leaders to teach.
Military Veterans Initiative
Military Veterans Initiative
Teach For America’s Military Veterans Initiative helps to bring more veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces into the fight against educational inequity.
The initiative works with several veterans' organizations, including the nonprofit Got Your 6, the Department of Defense's Troops to Teachers transition program, and the Student Veterans of America to ensure that military veterans and spouses are aware of teaching as a second career and that students across the country benefit from their talent and commitment.
The Native Alliance Initiative
The Native Alliance Initiative
The Native Alliance Initiative (NAI) works with Native students and leaders in Hawai‘i, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, the Twin Cities, and Washington state.
The alliance initiative works hand-in-hand with tribes and Native communities to expand educational opportunities for their students. Created to support and provide corps members with more strategies for incorporating tribal and community culture into the classroom, NAI recruits Native leaders to the teaching profession, and develop a critical pipeline of leaders committed to advocating for Native communities and children.
