Alex Fraiha

Software Engineer, InspireHQ

Alex Fraiha is a former educator who served as Walkabout Education’s Director of Operations for nearly a decade, helping create the Walkabout Learning Model with colleague Peg Cioffi. Before working with Walkabout Education, Alex was a classroom teacher and non-profit director. Most recently, Alex transitioned careers and followed his passion for technology, becoming a software engineer for an innovative start-up, InspireHQ, in 2023.

Alex continues to support Walkabout however he can, namely maintaining the Walkabout websites and the Walkabout Learning Model.

Ann Cook

Executive Director / Co-Founder New York Performance Standards Consortium

Ann Cook is the executive director and co-founder of the New York Performance Standards Consortium and was the co-founder and co-director of the Urban Academy Laboratory High School, a New York City public school. She has taught both high school and college level students in courses such as childrens' literature, the history of the civil rights movement, and Don't Read That Book -- a course on censorship. She is the author of three series of children's books including the Monster Series, illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Ben Wild

Founder of Walkabout Education

Ben Wild is WE's Founder and former Executive Director of nearly 15 years. After a rocky start in high school, it was his senior year at Walkabout that changed everything. Ben owes much of his success to the skills and confidence that he gained that year. After Walkabout, Ben spent 15 years as Co-President of Fusion Media, a corporate design firm he co-founded in 1998. Ben grew Fusion to 25 employees and signed clients like PepsiCo, American Express, and McGraw Hill. Ben's responsibilities included all financial operations, sales, human resources, and strategy. He also managed client projects focussing on employee retention and recognition, instructional design and leadership development. During his time at Fusion, he co-founded Halcyon records in Brooklyn, which remains an internationally-renowned record store, and now record label. From 2000 to 2014, Ben also served as an adjunct instructor and curriculum developer at Walkabout, while also providing support services for the program's group-building wilderness trips. 

In 2013, Ben left Fusion to fully invest his time and passion in Walkabout. He has dedicated the balance of his career to realizing WE’s vision of making a Walkabout education broadly available to high school students. Ben graduated summa cum laude from Western Connecticut State University and holds a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a recipient of Harvard’s Leadership in Education Award, a scholarship for master's candidates with strong leadership potential.

Carlos Moreno

Co-Executive Director, Big Picture Learning

Carlos Moreno has been a teacher, a principal, a director, and now a Chief Executive Officer. But through it all he has been and continues to be an observer and a learner. A proud native New Yorker, Carlos is a passionate educational trailblazer committed to supporting school and district leaders to create high-quality, non-traditional schools designed to tackle systemic issues related to equity in education.

He currently serves as Executive Director for Big Picture Learning, a nonprofit organization that, since 1995, has developed over 150 such schools in the United States and throughout the world. He also co-founded and leads the Deeper Learning Equity Fellowship in partnership with the Internationals Network for Public Schools.

Chris Emdin

Author and Professor, Teachers College Columbia University

Dr. Christopher Emdin is a bestselling author and Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he also serves as Director of the Science Education program and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education. He is the author of the award winning book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-hop Generation and the New York Times bestseller For White Folks Who Teach In the Hood and the Rest of Ya’ll too.

He is an alumni fellow at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University and served as STEAM Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State and Minorities in Energy Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Emdin is a social critic, public intellectual and science advocate whose commentary on issues of race, culture, inequality and education have appeared in dozens of influential periodicals including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

Derrick Lewis

Senior Manager, Ernst & Young

Derrick H. Lewis is an energetic and passionate advisor and entrepreneur. Derrick currently is a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young and brings 10 years of experience in entrepreneurial, c-level, operational, human capital, technology, management consulting roles working with diverse organizations in the Public and Private sector.

Ed García Conde

Founder, Welcome2TheBronx

Ed García Conde is a social media consultant and successful blogger. Working as a real estate appraiser since 1998 has enabled him to become fluent about the histories of the five boroughs of New York City as well as the current social and cultural transitions of these areas.

His blog Welcome2TheBronx has become the most widely read and recognized Bronx blog (250,000 monthly visitors and a social media reach of 1.5-2 million weekly).

2017 was a landmark year as Columbia University Libraries, recognizing the importance of Welcome2TheBronx, began archiving the website so that scholars may research the site in perpetuity.

David Wallance

Architect

David Wallance is an architect, author, and educator. He is the founder of DRA/W, an architectural practice that takes a holistic approach to the integration of design thinking, technical skill, and research. 

Over the course of his career David has designed award-winning projects ranging from residences to museums, laboratories, and high-rise housing. He was the senior designer on the widely acclaimed Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, where he spearheaded the design of the building’s innovative ultra-transparent glass enclosure, hailed by the New York Times as “what may well be the finest example of glass curtain wall construction ever realized in the United States”. David’s forthcoming book, The Future of Modular Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2021) encompasses 15 years of research, design, and technical development of a next-generation system of modular construction geared for affordable mid- and high-rise urban housing. 

David studied at the Cooper Union under such influential teachers as John Hejduk and Robert Slutzky. His student thesis was published in Education of an Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). From 1997 to 2017 he was an adjunct associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation where he co-directed the advanced building technology sequence.

Eugene Lebwohl

Co-Founder, Walkabout Program

Eugene Lebwohl is a 35-year veteran of education, school administration and consulting. He was the director and co-creator of the original Walkabout program, an alternative high school experience for 12th-grade students in the Putnam/Westchester region. This full-year program which has been in existence for 37 years was designed to build students’ confidence, provide them with a sense of direction, and teach the youngsters valuable life skills that can be applied to college and their futures.

Lebwohl has also devoted time to the Candreva Foundation, a regional environmental foundation of which he is president. He is an educational advisor to Copen Family Fund, a not-for-profit international education foundation, and he is an adjunct professor at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.

Hannah Williams

School Developer, Big Picture Learning

Hannah Williams is an educator and artist from Seattle, WA. She has spent the past decade working on innovative educational solutions both in public middle schools, youth arts non- profits and as a new school developer. (And playing in indie rock bands.) While earning her Master's degree in School Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she researched and designed a new school model called Out of The Box Learning Studio for which she earned a Breakthrough Schools Model planning grant from Next Generation Learning Challenges. She is currently working on turning this model into a usable resource for others who want to re-imagine their school or classroom. Hannah's work centers around interest- powered" learning, "student-driven" education and breaking down the barriers between school and real life.

Kevin Cox

Chief Personnel Officer, General Electric

L. Kevin Cox has been the Chief Human Resources Officer at American Express Company since April 1, 2005. Mr. Cox joined American Express in 2005 and served as its Executive Vice President of Human Resources since April 2005. He served as the Chief Architect of American Express's human capital plan with responsibility for all aspects of global human resource operations and strategy. He has been a leader of human resources for more than two decades, serving in a variety of specialist and generalist roles. His human resource expertise lies in the fields of organizational effectiveness, executive compensation, and driving large scale of complex change. He is actively involved in a number of professional and HR organizations. 

Kevin currently serves as the Chief Personnel Officer at General Electric.

Jal Mehta

Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Jal Mehta is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research explores the role of different forms of knowledge in tackling major social and political problems, particularly problems of human improvement. He has also written extensively on what it would take to improve American education, with a particular focus on the professionalization of teaching.

Jal is the author of The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) and the co-editor of The Futures of School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2012). He is currently working on two projects: In Search of Deeper Learning, a contemporary study of schools, systems, and nations that are seeking to produce ambitious instruction; and The Chastened Dream, a history of the effort to link social science with social policy to achieve social progress.

Linda Nathan

Executive Director, Center for Artistry and Scholarship

Linda Nathan, EdD is the Executive Director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship (CAS), a non-profit organization that develops and supports innovative and tenacious leaders in education to build more equitable, collaborative and creative communities. Dr. Nathan is co-founder of CAS’s Perrone-Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership (PSi), a year-long graduate certificate program that develops innovative leaders who integrate education, artistic, and community-based resources to transform the lives of youth and families.

Dr. Nathan is a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she teaches courses on school design and school observation. As an experienced leader in education, Dr. Nathan actively mentors teachers and principals, and consults nationally and internationally on a wide range of topics, such as:  leadership, creativity, pedagogy, differentiated instruction, curriculum design, family engagement, developing mission, vision and values, board development and fundraising, as well as strategic planning with an equity focus, and how to develop and evaluate a new or existing schools or nonprofits. Her international consulting includes Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, South Africa.

Dr. Nathan’s widely praised book, The Hardest Questions Aren’t on the Test, about teaching and leadership in urban schools, was published in 2009 in both English and Spanish. Her second book, When Grit Isn’t Enough, was released by Beacon Press in October of 2017. She blogs at www.lindanathan.com.

Lee Cutler

Former NYSUT Secretary-Treasurer

Lee Cutler is a political activist, longtime educator, human rights advocate and Walkabout alumni. Cutler’s twenty-four year teaching career began as a middle school English/Language Arts Teacher in Marlboro, New York, but he spent the bulk of his years teaching in the Nanuet Union Free School District. Cutler quickly became a leader in the field of middle level and experiential education, working with colleagues and administrators to transform schools into learning communities and improve overall school climate.

In 2008, Cutler was elected as Secretary-Treasurer of NYSUT where he served for six years overseeing the finances, building corporation, member benefits, conference and travel department, print and mail shop, food service, and Information Technology of this 605,000 member organization. He also is a graduate of the Cornell ILR NYSUT Leadership Institute and AFL-CIO Leadership Institute. He lives in Newburgh, New York with his wife Rissa and children Jared and Arianna.