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Mr. Greg Miller, was nominated by Governor Jan Brewer to serve on the Arizona State Board of Education. Governor Brewer’s nomination was confirmed by the AZ Senate Education Committee In April, 2009.

Eva Moskowitz is the Founder and CEO of Success Charter Network, which runs charter schools in Harlem. In 2006, Eva founded Harlem Success Academy, hailed by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein as “one of the best charter schools in the country” and cited by Mayor Michael Bloomberg for its “amazing performance.”

A former New York City council member and chair of the council’s education committee, Moskowitz remains a forceful advocate for education but has returned to her roots in teaching to implement all she learned while visiting hundreds of New York City’s 1,300 public and charter schools.

Dr. Gisèle Huff is a founder of The Learning Accelerator and the executive director of the Jaquelin Hume Foundation in San Francisco.
After a decade in the business world, she earned a Ph.D. in political science, with a concentration in political philosophy, at Columbia University. She has taught at Golden Gate University, San Francisco University High School and Dominican College. While at University High School, she served as the director of development for twelve years. She currently serves as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Learning and as a member of the Board of Directors of iNACOL. She is a member of the Advisory Board for Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and served as a member of the advisory committee for the National Charter School Research Project at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, and of the Executive Committee of the Digital Learning Council.

Born in Denver, Colorado, Spence graduated from South Denver High School, where she met her future husband, Peter. She attended Colorado State University from 1955 to 1956. Spence married in 1958; she and her husband, a dentist, have four children: Chris, Kathy, Greg, and Meg, and six grandchildren.

Spence was first elected to the Cherry Creek School District Board of Education in 1980 and served there continuously until 1993. During her tenure on the school board, she served as board treasurer for two years and board president for five. She is also a founding member of the Cherry Creek Schools Foundation and of the Denver School of the Arts.

Spence was an alternate delegate to the 1992 Republican National Convention and a delegate to the 1996 convention.

First elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1998, representing the 39th district– portions of Arapahoe County, Colorado south of Aurora, near Cherry Creek State Park. During her three terms, she sat on the House Education Committee, serving as chairman during her last two terms. She also sat on the House Judiciary Committee and House Appropriations Committee during her first term, the House Criminal Justice Committee during her second term, and the House Transportation and Energy Committee during her third term.
Focusing particularly on education issues in the Republican-controlled state house, Spence, in 2003, sponsored a successful measure to create a statewide school voucher program. The measure was the first statewide voucher program to be enacted into law following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that voucher programs did not necessarily violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Although the measure was signed into law by Governor Bill Owens, it was soon struck down by Colorado courts for violating the principle of local control.

Spence was elected to the Colorado State Senate in 2004; there, she serves on the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Transportation Committee. In 2007, she was elected Senate Assistant Minority Leader; as such, she is also a member of the Legislative Council.

Spence has been named a “Legislator of the Year” by several organizations, including the American Heart Association in 1999, the Colorado Association of Community Centered Boards in 2001, and the Colorado Alliance for Reform in Education in 2004.

Former Chairman of the Board at Helzberg Diamonds, a family owned business started in 1915. At the helm since 1962, expanded the company from its then 15 units into the third largest jewelry retailer consisting of 145 units in 23 states by the time it was sold in 1995 to Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett). Founded the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, a mentoring program by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, which is sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Creator of the I Am Loved! theme and now developing a licensing program for the trademark that will provide funding for public TV. Teaching “Achieving Management Excellence” course to MBA students at Rockhurst College.

Mr. Judd A. Gregg, J.D., serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Mr. Gregg is also a Senior Advisor of New Mountain Capital, LLC. Mr. Gregg joined the New Mountain team in 2011. Mr. Gregg has been Board of International Advisor at The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. since May 2011. He has been a Director of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. since March 7, 2011. Mr. Gregg has been a Director of Honeywell International Inc. since April 25, 2011. He was a United States Senator from 1993 to 2011. He was a Governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993 and as U.S. Representative from 1981 to 1989. He is a national leader on fiscal policy, a well known budget expert, and a respected voice on health care, economic, and financial regulatory issues. Mr. Gregg was a chief negotiator of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. He was the lead sponsor of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and, along with the late Senator Ted Kennedy, co-authored the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Senator Gregg, along with Senator Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles and Governor Ed Rendell is co-chairing an initiative known as Fix the Debt which is an effort to develop a comprehensive deficit reduction agreement. Prior to public service, he was an attorney and businessman. He has been a Director of IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. since March 07, 2011 and Stroz Friedberg, LLC since September 2011. He is also a Director of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Mr. Gregg received a Juris Doctor in 1972 from Boston University Law School and a L.L.M. in Tax Law in 1975 from Boston University School of Law. He earned A.B. in English from Columbia University in 1969.

Michele Norris is one of the most trusted voices in American Journalism. Her voice informs, engages and enlightens listeners with thoughtful interviews and in depth reporting as one of the hosts of NPR’s flagship afternoon broadcast, All Things Considered. Michele uses an approachable interviewing style that is at once relaxed and rigorous. She’s interviewed world leaders, Nobel laureates, Oscar winners, American Presidents, military leaders, influential newsmakers and even astronauts traveling in outer space.

In her first book she turns her formidable interviewing and investigative skills on her own background to unearth long hidden family secrets that raise questions about her racial legacy and shed new light on America’s complicated racial history.

Before joining NPR in 2002, Michele spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News in the Washington Bureau. She has also worked as a staff writer for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Michele has received numerous awards for her work. In 2009, She was named “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ recognized Norris for her body of work, in addition to her coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign — when she co-hosted NPR’s Democratic presidential candidates debate, covered both conventions, anchored multi-hour election and inauguration live broadcasts and moderated a series of candid conversations with voters on the intersection of race and politics. That series earned Michele and Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep an Alfred I. Dupont -Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcasting. Norris was honored with NABJ’s 2006 Salute to Excellence Award, for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Achievement Award; and the 1990 Livingston Award for a series about a six-year-old who lived in a crack house. That series was reprinted in the book, Ourselves Among Others, along with essays by Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Annie Dillard and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She was named one of Essence Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Black Americans in 2009; elected to Ebony Magazine’s Power 150 list in 2009; and honored with Ebony’s 8th Outstanding Women in Marketing & Communications Award, in 2007.

Norris also earned both an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News’ coverage of 9/11. She is on the judging committee for both the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Livingston Awards. Norris is also a frequent guest on Meet the Press and The Chris Matthews Show on NBC.
She attended the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in electrical engineering and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she studied journalism. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Broderick Johnson, an attorney with their two young children and an adult step-son.

Dr. Nancy S. Grasmick was Maryland’s first female state superintendent and the U.S.’s longest serving appointed schools chief. She’s known for her strong focus on student achievement, teacher quality, parent involvement, public school funding, and early care and education. In fact, it is this commitment to high-quality early learning that has made Maryland the only state in the nation to consolidate all its early childhood programs at the state department of education.

Under Dr. Grasmick’s leadership, Maryland has been nationally recognized for its many achievements. Maryland’s SAT scores steadily ranked first in the College Board’s Middle States region, and Maryland leads the nation in improving high school students’ performance in the rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) program.

Dr. Grasmick has received numerous awards for her visionary leadership, including the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. In 2007, Loyola College in Maryland awarded Dr. Grasmick its President’s Medal in honor of her professional accomplishments and service to the community. She was also named a 2007 Influential Marylander by The Daily Record.