Mary Stafford
Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer
Email
Mary Stafford’s career experience has spanned higher education, traditional K-12 public education, and charter schools. She has a well-documented career of demonstrating powerful results over time in charter school settings. Mary’s most recent position involved managing educational partnerships in seven states ranging from charter school to traditional settings as well as drop-out recovery centers. Schools she has most recently served are located in major urban settings including Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Davenport, Milwaukee, Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus, Duluth, Peoria, Rockford, and St. Louis, serving in excess of 10,000 students. In this role she acted as the leader of achievement, client relations and operations for sites within the Midwest. The schools Stafford was responsible for are some of the most successful in the organization’s portfolio. She consistently demonstrated results via dramatically improved test scores, high satisfaction among clients and long-term relationships. Her region had a strong record of academic growth across the Midwest, with a range of student populations, including improved academic outcomes in schools where the majority students were members of historically underserved, minority communities and where a high percentage of students received free and reduced lunch. Stafford’s prior experience includes positions as Superintendent and Associate Superintendent, Dean in Higher Education, Human Resources and Organizational Development Consultant, Charter School founding Principal, instructor at the college level and teaching at the pre-school and kindergarten level. Her recognized strength’s include charter school start up and talent identification and development. Stafford has started a dozen charter schools in as many years. She has been at the forefront of the educational reform movement for over a decade.
Dr. Joseph Wise
Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer
Email
Joseph Wise has a longstanding record of helping school districts, school boards, and school leaders make rapid improvements to support student achievement. He has successfully led major public and private sector organizations throughout North America to set ambitious goals and achieve impressive results. Dr. Wise has successfully bridged academic, business, and governmental interests to build- and sustain- decisive organizational reforms.
His passion for all students, particularly those who are underserved and disadvantaged, drives a sense of urgency about the reforms needed to help America regain its competitive edge through the academic preparation of our nation’s children. His focus on great governance, great leadership, and great student and parent engagement has been the keystone of his accomplishments.
Dr. Wise formerly served as Superintendent of Schools for the nation’s 19th largest public school district (Duval County Public Schools, Jacksonville, FL) and the State of Delaware’s largest public school district (Christina School District, Wilmington, DE), earning a reputation as a visionary leader who brought about measurable improvements in both student achievement and operational management.
Dr. Wise currently serves as co-founder and Managing Director of Atlantic Research Partners, Inc., a professional services firm that supports public schools and school districts in 18 states. He is also co-founder and Chief Education Officer of Distinctive Schools, responsible for the management of three high-performing urban public non-profit charter schools on the south side of Chicago.
He is a former Executive Vice President and Chief Education Officer with Edison Learning, Inc., which provides education programs and services to 340,000 students throughout 25 states and the United Kingdom. He also previously served as Director of Organizational Development for the Disney organization. He began his career in education as a teacher before assuming executive leadership roles in various districts, including Orange County Public Schools and Seminole County Public Schools in Florida, and Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Annapolis, MD.
Early in his career, Dr. Wise performed consulting and auditing services for school districts and commercial organizations. In 1998, while performing an organizational audit for an educational technology firm based in Dallas, TX, he was asked to provide additional management training and executive coaching services for the organization. Upon completion of that work, he was retained to lead the enterprise itself, and served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 1998 to 2002.
Dr. Wise has earned numerous honors, including the 2006 Champion for Children Award conferred by the HOSTS Learning organization. He served on the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, was selected as a Broad Fellow by Eli Broad Institute for School Boards (2005), was appointed a Fellow to the Eli Broad Urban Superintendents Academy (2003), and served on the Academy’s adjunct faculty and advisory committee. Dr. Wise also serves on the Board of Directors of Northwest Evaluation Association, a non-profit assessment firm that supports teaching and learning for more than 5 million students in more than 4,000 North American school districts. In addition to his professional achievements, Dr. Wise has been honored for his individual and community service work, remains a lifetime member of the NAACP, a lifetime member of the Florida Association of PTAs, and a founding member of the District Management Council.
Dr. Wise is the author of three textbooks: Power of Teaching—The Science of the Art (1st Edition, 2002; 2nd Edition, 2007); Power of Coaching—Teachers and Teaching (2009); and The TAO of Interviewing (1st Edition 1994; 4th Edition, 2007). He holds a doctorate from the University of Florida, a master’s degree from the University of Central Florida, and a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University.
David Sundstrom
Chief HR and Compliance Officer
Email
David Sundstrom is co-founder and President of Atlantic Research Partners. Since 2007, he and his team of education specialists have provided leadership training for school district administrators and superintendents, assisted Human Resources departments on performance audit and recruitment and retention strategies, and assisted school boards in the drafting of policies governing the multiple and nuanced issues affecting preK-12 education. An attorney specializing in contract and education law, Sundstrom has served as counsel to school district leaders and school district boards. He began his career in education in 1977 at Michigan’s Hawthorn Center, then a state hospital for severely disturbed children and adolescents in Northville, Michigan. For a period of years he additionally served as an elementary school teacher in rural Parker Corners, Michigan, and acknowledges that his years in both special education and general education settings have had a profound effect on his subsequent work as an attorney. Between 1990 and 1999, he taught senior-level courses in Business Law at Michigan State University, and courses in Trial Advocacy and Law Practice at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Sundstrom began his practice of law at Gandelot, Stoepker and Dickson in Detroit in 1985, focusing on contract negotiation and litigation. Over years his practice grew to encompass employment and civil rights issues, employment protocol design and implementation, and contractual and labor dispute-resolution. He subsequently assumed the duties of Chief Corporate Officer for one of North America’s largest providers of administrative software and services in the PreK-12 educational market. In addition to his work for private organizations, he has served in school leadership roles that included the role of Chief of Staff and Interim Superintendent in Wilmington DE, and Chief of Staff for the nation’s 19th largest urban school district: Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville FL. David Sundstrom is co-author of two textbooks: Power of Teaching—The Science of the Art (1st Edition 2002; 2nd Edition, 2007) and Power of Coaching—Teachers and Teaching (2009).
