Laura has a 20-year career in public education. She is currently the Executive Director at the Maryland Family Network. She has worked on several education reform projects related to Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, and Promise Neighborhoods. She spent a year in Hawaii, embedded in the Hawaii Department of Education, leading the design and development work on Educator Evaluation. Her projects have been focused on complex, systemic reform work in school systems, state departments of education, and non-profit organizations. Previously, Laura worked in the central office of the Baltimore City Public School System for eleven years, most recently as the Deputy Chief of Staff. She was the lead staff on the district’s stimulus planning, including the Human Capital strategy development, and the redesign of the central office, which involved a move to a weighted student funding formula and the creation of school support networks, as well as new accountability measures. Laura was the principal architect of the district’s initiatives to create new public schools, leading the Office of New and Charter Schools, facilitating and supporting the opening of more than 20 new public schools. Additionally, she was a regional superintendent for 32 schools that spanned PreK through 12th grade. Laura taught elementary and middle school in New Orleans and Baltimore. She was a community organizer on school reform issues for a citywide non-profit and a policy advocate at a statewide non-profit organization. She went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her BA and she holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Baltimore. Laura is also the author of several books for children.