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Kim Smith is co-founder and CEO of Bellwether Education Partners. She is widely recognized as an innovative and entrepreneurial leader in education, and was featured in Newsweek’s report on the “Women of the 21st Century” as “the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century.” After serving as a founding team member at Teach For America, she went on to found and lead an AmeriCorps program for community-based leaders in education as well as a business start-up and worked in marketing for online learning. After completing her M.B.A. at Stanford University, she co-founded and led NewSchools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy firm focused on transforming public education, where she helped to create a new, bipartisan, cross-sector community of entrepreneurial change agents. Ms. Smith has helped to incubate numerous education and social change organizations and has served on a range of boards, which currently include those of NewSchools, Education Sector, and Giving Assets. She has authored a number of publications about the entrepreneurial education landscape, including “What Is Educational Entrepreneurship?” in Education Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities, “Social Purpose Capital Markets in K–12” in The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship: Possibilities for School Reform, “Creating Responsive Supply in Education” in More Than Just Schools: Rethinking the Demand for Educational Entrepreneurship and “Innovation in Education: Problems and Opportunities.” She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

Problem

Today there is a growing community of performance-driven education reform leaders, entrepreneurs, organizations, foundations and public institutions that are spearheading innovative approaches to better serve all students, especially those in low-income communities. These organizations and their supporters are demonstrating the promise of innovative solutions for closing the persistent achievement gap in public education. As these organizations gain recognition and grow beyond the start-up stage, they need help to develop business strategies that are more sophisticated, internal management systems that are more mature, and leadership capacity that is deeper and more diverse. At the same time, to maximize their effectiveness and broaden their impact, these organizations need the support of strong thought leadership outside of their own day-to-day work to help coordinate their efforts, inform policymakers and improve the political and policy context for their work as well as to share their successful approaches with the public education field at large.

Innovation / New Solution

They support leaders through a blend of grant-funded programs to benefit the field at large and customized consulting services for organizations and individuals in public education. Their activities focus on four primary areas of expertise: thought leadership and publishing for the field, leadership and organizational development, strategic advising and consulting, and executive search and senior talent recruitment and placement. Bellwether’s programs and services are aimed at improving leadership in education at a crucial moment for our country when our goal of a more equitable democratic society as well as our changing economy demand dramatically better outcomes from our public education system.

Impact

Bellwether has been featured in and contributed to a number of publications about education reform in the national media. They provided programs and services designed to support and cultivate leaders in education for Aspen Institute and NewSchools Fellows. The Aspen Institute – NewSchools Venture Fund fellowship provides accomplished leaders the unusual opportunity to step back from their demanding daily work and reflect with a group of extraordinary peers on their collective and individual work as leaders and change agents. Together, the members of the group challenge each other, reflect on their work in the context of values-based leadership, and develop new insights for effective and enlightened leadership in education across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. They also work with a long list of organizations and foundations on education reform.

Expert Comments

• They try to make the wonky stuff of education sector more actionable.
  
  
• Their concept is to pull together a consulting practice that consists of high-visibility thought leaders with wickedly impressive track records and solve problems. Monisha Lozier, Andy Rotherham, Kim Smith, Sara Mead, and Mary Wells are education reform's version of the TV show Private Practice.
  
  

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