Kim Mazzuca, Board PresidentPresident
Marin Education Fund
(view bio)Willis J. Hulings, III, Board Vice PresidentPresident & CEO
The Education Resources Institute
(view bio)Elizabeth Morgan, Board SecretaryDirector, Youth Programs
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
(view bio)Terry L. Muilenburg, Board TreasurerSenior Vice President
USA Funds
(view bio)Harold Brown
Executive Director
EdWorks
(view bio)Sarita E. BrownPresident
Excelencia in Education
(view bio)Dr. Alberto F. CabreraProfessor
University of Maryland
(view bio)Dr. Michelle Asha CooperPresident
Institute for Higher Education Policy
(view bio)John E. DeanManaging Partner
Law Offices of John E. Dean
(view bio)Pranav KothariManaging Director
Mission Measurement
(view bio)Michael A. Mallory Executive Director
Ron Brown Scholars
(view bio)BiographiesKim Mazzuca, President and CEO. Almost immediately upon taking the helm in 1999, Kim led the Board of Directors and staff in a major strategic planning effort, resulting in the organization’s first-ever Strategic Plan, a mission shift from a technical scholarship processing center to a premier college access organization serving students who have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education. Kim founded the organization’s flagship program, the College Summer Institute in 1999. With the inaugural class in 2000 and a 100% college-going rate, the program has been recognized as a national model by the Lumina Education Foundation and is currently preparing for growth and expansion. The organization’s college access and success model now delivers a full-service college readiness program and yields a 90% college graduation rate. Under her leadership, students reached and scholarship output has more than doubled, annual fundraising has grown by 300%, and net assets by 400%.
A Bay Area native and first generation college graduate, Kim brings more than two decades of executive nonprofit management and philanthropic leadership in the areas of human services, workforce development and education. She obtained both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Francisco State University and is a graduate of Stanford University’s Business School, Executive Nonprofit Leadership Program, where she was named a fellow in 2001. Kim has served on numerous community boards and is currently on the Board of Directors of the School-to-Career Partnership. She also serves as Chair of Marin County’s Educational Equity Steering Committee and is on the adjunct faculty of Dominican University of California, where she teaches Nonprofit Business Management. Outside of her professional life, Kim enjoys her family and cycling through Northern California.
Willis Hulings is President and CEO of TERI (The Education Resources Institute) and a member of its Board of Directors.
Mr. Hulings joined TERI in February 2005 with over 25 years of experience in consumer and corporate finance and a deep interest in education. He served most recently as Chief Operating Officer for AmeriFee LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corporation. Prior to AmeriFee, he was a Managing Director at First Union Corporation where he held several positions including Head of Corporate Finance, Head of Specialized Corporate Lending and Head of Capital Markets E-Commerce. Prior to First Union, he spent over eight years in investment banking at Kidder Peabody & Co. and before that was a lending officer at the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.
Mr, Hulings’ interest in education began during college when he worked for the Jersey City Public Schools teaching ESL, GED and Life Skills Curricula in the Adult Education and Vietnamese Refugee Programs.
Mr. Hulings holds a BA degree from Yale University and an MBA degree from the Wharton School. He is a Board Member for World T.E.A.M. Sports, the National College Access Network (NCAN) and Boston College’s Carroll School of Management.
Elizabeth Morgan is Director of Youth Programs at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation where she oversees the development and management of direct grants to other organizations as well as the Foundation's Young Scholars Program.
Before joining the Foundation, Ms. Morgan was a grant officer for the Michigan State Bar Foundation, which awards more than $8 million annually to provide civil legal assistance to the poor in Michigan. Ms. Morgan also has significant experience in communications, including three years as a reporter and editor at the Bureau of National Affairs, a legal and business publishing company in Washington, DC.
She holds a J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University and an A.B. in history from Duke University.
Terry L. Muilenburg is responsible for representing USA Funds®’ interests to the federal government, including the legislative and executive branches. She also works closely with other student loan organizations and higher education access groups in advancing policies that promote the college preparedness, access and success of students and families.
Prior to becoming
USA Funds’ senior vice president, government and industry relations, in 2000, she served as senior vice president, government affairs, for USA Funds’ former parent company, USA Group.
Before joining USA Group in 1994, Muilenburg directed the Washington, D.C., office of the State of Connecticut for then-Gov. Lowell Weicker. She also has served as a key staff member on two U.S. Senate committees that have jurisdiction over higher education: the
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies of the Appropriations Committee, as well as the panel now known as the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Additionally, Muilenburg has represented USA Funds on the board of directors of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs since 2003, and has served on the board of directors of the National College Access Network since 2006. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia.
KnowledgeWorks Vice President
Harold D. Brown is the founding Executive Director of EdWorks. In this dual role, Harold oversees the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI), a more than $50 million dollar initiative to transform large, struggling urban high schools into smaller, more successful schools. He also leads the Ohio Early College High School Network (ECHS), part of a national effort to give underserved students the opportunity to gain an Associate's Degree, or 60 hours of college credit upon high school graduation. Harold serves on the Board of Directors for Cincinnati Youth Collaborative and The Buckeye Ranch in Grove City, Ohio.
Harold has a long history with KnowledgeWorks Foundation, even working for its predecessor, Student Loan Funding Corporation, Inc., as Corporate Communications & Media Coordinator. Prior to this, Harold served as Director of Multicultural Enrollment Services for Miami University (Ohio), and as Chief of Staff for the Vice President for Student Affairs, where he honed his considerable public speaking skills writing speeches and presentations for the vice president.
Harold is frequently quoted in newspapers across Ohio on key education issues including high school reform, higher education, and multicultural access. A native of Oxford, Ohio, Harold earned his Bachelor's Degree in Government, with honors, from Harvard University.
Ms. Brown has spent more than two decades at prominent national academic and educational institutions and at the highest levels of government working to develop more effective strategies to raise academic achievement and opportunity for low-income and minority students. From the start of her career at the University of Texas at Austin, where she created a national model promoting minority success in graduate education, to her service as Executive Director for the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, to her current post as founding
President of Excelencia in Education in Washington, DC, Ms. Brown has focused her work on expanding this country's human capital through improving the quality of higher education.
Dr. Alberto Cabrera holds a Ph.D. degree in Educational Administration and a MS in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He specializes in the impact of college on students, college choice, classroom experiences, minorities in Higher Education and college outcomes. He has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Penn State University, SUNY-Albany, and Arizona State University-West campus. Dr. Cabrera has served in the advisory boards of Pathways to College Network, the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC)'s Student Outcomes, and the GEAR UP Evaluation Council of the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships (NCCEP). He has also consulted with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), the US Congress' Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA, the American Council on Education, Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, the US Department of Education, the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, the Argentinean Minister of Education, and with several universities in the USA and abroad. He has served in the National College Access Network’s board of directors as well as in the editorial boards of Journal of Higher Education, Review of Higher Education and Research in Higher Education. Recently, he was appointed to the advisory board for the Higher Education Accreditation Agency of the Provincial Government of Aragon, Spain. His work on classroom practices, the role of finances on college persistence and on determinants of default behavior has received several awards. He was also co-principal investigator for the IES grant titled Dream Deferred which provided a most comprehensive review of the impact of GEAR UP on awareness and readiness for college among low-income middle school students. He was the co-leader of the Diversity Institute, a project funded by NSF seeking to create inclusive teaching practices in STEM fields ( http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/cirtl/diversityinstitute ).
Michelle Asha Cooper, Ph.D., is president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). While leading one of the world’s premier research and policy centers, she oversees the organization’s expansive research portfolio and innovative programmatic activities focusing on access and success, accountability, diversity, finance, and global impact. Cooper works with IHEP staff, some of the most respected professionals in the public policy and research fields, to develop new ideas and approaches to help low-income, minority, and other historically underrepresented populations gain access to and achieve success in postsecondary education.
Most recently, Cooper served as the deputy director for the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (Advisory Committee) at the U.S. Department of Education. The Advisory Committee is an independent, nonpartisan committee created by Congress to provide advice and counsel to Congress and the Secretary of Education on higher education and student aid policy. In this position, she interacted with policymakers, oversaw all policy research activities, and managed day-to-day operations.
Before joining the Advisory Committee, Cooper held various leadership positions at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Council for Independent Colleges, and King’s College. She is also the 2002 recipient of the National Education Association’s Excellence in the Academy New Scholar Award.
A native of Charleston, S.C., Cooper received her B.A. from the College of Charleston, a M.P.S. from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park.
John E. Dean is a Washington, D.C. attorney specializing in higher education law and policy. He is the former associate counsel to the House Committee on Education & Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives and has worked on higher education policy since 1985. He is a frequent speaker at meetings of colleges and universities, financial aid administrators, and others involved with student aid programs.
Mr. Dean serves on the Board of Directors of the National College Access Network, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, ITT Educational Services, and Higher Education Washington, Inc. He is with the Law Offices of John E. Dean.
Dean is a member of the American Bar Association, Administrative Law Section, and the Virginia and District of Columbia bar associations. He is the author of articles in scholarly publications and is a frequent contributor to trade association and other publications read by the financial services industry.
Mr. Dean received a B.A. from Georgetown University in 1973, and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1982.
Pranav Kothari is Managing Director at Mission Measurement. Pranav guides his clients through the process of defining impact, developing outcomes, and establishing metrics to assess and improve the performance of social investments.
Pranav holds an A.B. in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in corporate strategy and organizational behavior. His professional experience includes strategy development, product development, business formation and government relations for Student Loan Funding and KnowledgeWorks Foundation.
Pranav currently serves on the advisory boards of the Economics Center for Education and Research at the University of Cincinnati and the Center for Economic Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
As President of the Ron Brown Scholar Fund, Michael Mallory continues to demonstrate a profound commitment to increasing educational opportunities for young people. He launched the Ron Brown Scholar Program named in honor of Ron Brown, former Secretary of Commerce in 1996. This program not only awards $40,000 college scholarships to academically talented and financially deserving African American students, but it also focuses on collaborative partnerships while creating a life-long network of outstanding young leaders committed to each other, their communities and national service.
Before leading the Ron Brown Scholar Program, Mr. Mallory worked in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Virginia where he earned a B.S. in Science Education and a M.Ed. in Administration and Supervision. Serving a dual role as the University’s Director of Minority Recruitment and Assistant Dean of Admissions, he received national recognition for increasing the recruiting, retention and graduation rates of African American students.
Mr. Mallory initiated UVA’s first Black Alumni Reunion in 1987 and was co-founder of the Walter N. Ridley Scholarship Program which has accumulated nearly $4 million in assets. He served on a number of faculty committees at UVA and received the prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year in 1996.