Jeanne Allen

Jeanne Allen pioneered the Center for Education Reform (CER) in 1993 to restore excellence to education and built it into the nation’s leading voice for innovation and opportunity in education. Almost 30 years later, CER continues to help unite education innovators, advance and defend sound policy, rally parents and make the cause of education freedom the most important domestic issue of our time. In 2021, with Covid making transparent the deficiencies of the traditional education system, CER launched the $1 million STOP Award to Transform Education – now the Yass Prize - in partnership with CER Director and long-time education philanthropist Janine Yass, to honor education providers who have outperformed for underserved students. The Yass Prize and STOP Awards Initiative honors the country’s top innovators who deliver best-in-class education and exemplify a Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless approach to education. It awards over $16 million annually and creates unprecedented partnerships that accelerate impact with the speed and urgency students deserve. A respected national thought leader for more than three decades, Jeanne has written and appeared extensively throughout the media. She has contributed her analysis and voice to hundreds of outlets from NBC to FOX, the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post. Jeanne Allen is a regular contributor to Forbes Online, authors a weekly newsletter entitled Forza, hosts her own podcast, in Piazza, and is a sought-after speaker. She has been a trusted advisor to policymakers and philanthropists and serves on numerous boards and posts including managing director of the StartEd Accelerator, founding advisor to the Modern States Education Alliance, and an integral member of the ASU-GSV community since its inception in 2010. Her book An Unfinished Journey: Education & the American Dream (2020) chronicles her journey through education. She is also the author of Education Reform: Before it Was Cool (2014), Manifesto: A Movement at Risk (2016) and co-author with Angela Dale of The School Reform Handbook: How to Improve Your Schools (1995). A first-generation Italian-American, Jeanne is mother to four amazing people & a grandmother to two. When she’s not challenging education convention, she enjoys spoiling them and spending time on the water with her husband Dr. Kevin Strother, educator, boat Captain and classically-trained musician.