Michele Cahill

Michele Cahill is vice-president for national program at Carnegie Corporation of New York where she leads the philanthropy's strategy to expand educational opportunity through systemic change across K-12 and higher education to increase graduation and degree completion by urban and low-income students, and to support expanded pathways to citizenship, civil participation and civic integration for immigrants and disconnected youth. Cahill co-chaired the Carnegie–Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Transforming Mathematics and Science Education that published, the Opportunity Equation report in 2009, and she leads the subsequent mobilization that includes the “100kin10” partnership for STEM teaching that has been recognized by the White House and by the Clinton Global Initiative America. (www.opportunityequation.org and www.100kin10.org.) Prior to rejoining Carnegie Corporation in 2007, Cahill served as senior counselor to the chancellor for education policy in the New York City Department of Education under Chancellor Joel Klein. She was a member of the Children First senior leadership team that oversaw and implemented the full-scale reorganization and reform of the New York City public schools. She played a pivotal role in the development of Children First reforms in secondary education, district redesign, new school development, and the pioneering multiple pathways to graduation initiative, targeting accelerated learning and graduation by overage and disconnected youth. Cahill has more than thirty years’ experience in education reform, youth development and urban affairs work. She has a B.A. in Urban Affairs from Saint Peter's College, a Masters of Arts in Urban Affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and she pursued doctoral studies in social policy and planning at Columbia University where she was a Revson Fellow.