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EWA Board Biographies

Officers

Stephanie Banchero, President

Scott Elliott, Vice President/Journalists

Kent Fischer, Vice President/Advocates

Scott Jaschik, Secretary

Dale Mezzacappa, Immediate Past President

Board Members

Stephanie Banchero is a national education reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She covers national and state Kindergarten though 12th grade education issues. Prior to joining the Journal in April 2010, Banchero served as a national education reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 13 years where she covered statewide and national education issues, including student testing, teacher quality issues and the academic achievement gap. Previously, Banchero worked as a reporter at the Charlotte Observer, Philadelphia Inquirer and the Salt Lake Tribune. She has been awarded numerous citations for her work, including a 2006 first place feature award from EWA for her magazine profile of a father struggling with the care and education of his children and a 2004 first place award from EWA and the Missouri School of Journalism for her three-part series on a student transferring schools as part of the No Child Left Behind law. Both years, she was a finalist for EWA’s Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting. She also received honorable mentions from the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families. In 1988, Banchero received a bachelor of arts from the University of Utah in Communications and in 1991 she received her master’s degree in Journalism from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. From September 2008 to May 2009, Ms. Banchero served as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University. She now resides in Chicago.

Scott Elliott is the education reform reporter for the Indianapolis Star where he writes about national, state and local education issues with a focus on urban school reform, school choice and standardized testing. Previously, he wrote primarily about education as a member of the editorial board of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News after serving as that paper's education reporter for a decade. Elliott and his colleague, Mark Fisher, won the 2005 National Headliner Award for education reporting for a series of stories about testing and No Child Left Behind. Elliott also is the author of Public Schools, Private Markets: A Reporter's Guide to Covering Privatization in Education, published in 2005 by the Education Writers Association.

Kent Fischer joined GMMB as a vice president in 2009 after a 15-year career as one of the nation’s top education writers. He is a three-time winner of national EWA awards, and covered education for The Dallas Morning News, the St. Petersburg Times and other newspapers. As a reporter, his stories probing corruption in Dallas schools helped spark several federal investigations and resulted in the firings and indictments of more than a dozen district employees. At GMMB, he helps lead the firm’s education improvement and advocacy work. Fischer’s reporting know-how, education expertise and communications experience give him a unique understanding of how education politics, policy and the media intersect and interact. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.

Kathryn Baron is a freelance radio reporter and producer in the San Francisco Bay area. She worked at KQED Public Radio from 1997 to 2008 after several years in television, commercial radio and print reporting. When she’s not hosting the morning newscasts, Kathryn covers education—from preschool to college—a beat she says is in her DNA coming from a family of teachers. After earning a B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Albany, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for a non-profit education group organizing students around Title IX. It was while watching firsthand the sausage-making process of how a bill becomes law that she decided to return to journalism, where she had first dabbled as a teenager delivering Newsday on her blue Schwinn. Her articles have appeared in Parenting, the Nation, Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News, among other publications, and she blogs for the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's Thoughts On Public Education.

Dale Mezzacappa has written about education for 25 years with the Philadelphia Inquirer and now as contributing editor of the independent nonprofit Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a website and bimonthly publication that covers the city schools. Before taking the education beat, she reported on government and politics from Trenton and Washington for the Inquirer and the Record of Hackensack, N.J. She’s earned a long list of awards from organizations including EWA, the Society of Professional Journalists, the New Jersey Press Association and the Columbia University School of Journalism. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Monthly and Education Next, among other publications. In 1990 and 1991, she studied issues relating to children, poverty and education as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She teaches journalism at Swarthmore College and worked with the Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media to help develop a resource list for a new course in education reporting at Columbia. She is a graduate of Vassar College.

Cornelia Grumman recently stepped down as Executive Director of the First Five Years Fund, where for more than four years she led its federal advocacy and national communication efforts to secure greater public investment in high quality early childhood education programs, beginning at birth. Prior to the First Five Years Fund start-up, She was previously a member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board, where she won many awards, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials that led to reforms of Illinois’ criminal justice system, a 2001 Studs Terkel Award for coverage of disadvantaged communities, and 2006, 2005 and 2001 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism for her coverage of children and families. Grumman joined the Chicago Tribune in 1994 as a general assignment reporter. She also worked at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. and the Daily Southtown in Chicago, and as a stringer in The Washington Post’s Beijing bureau. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Duke University. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two young children, where she does occasional consulting projects between making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Elizabeth Green is the editor of GothamSchools, the nonprofit news site covering the New York City public schools. In 2009-2010, she was a Spencer Fellow in education journalism at Columbia University. She previously covered education for The New York Sun and U.S. News & World Report. She has also written about education for the Village Voice and The New York Times Magazine and is a 2006 graduate of Harvard.

Dakarai I. Aarons is the education and policy manager for CommunicationWorks, where he manages key messaging, outreach and interactive projects focused on urban education, school leadership, school improvement and policy change in K-12 education, and also on projects involving student access and success in postsecondary education. Prior to joining CW, Aarons was a staff writer for Education Week, where he covered local school districts and school leadership and management and was a founding author of the District Dossier blog on edweek.org, which delivers news and analysis on the trends and challenges facing America's school districts. Before joining Education Week, he covered local and state education issues for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., earning recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Tennessee Press Association. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, the Des Moines Register, and The Miami Herald. A native of Washington, D.C., he holds a bachelor's degree in news-editorial journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Cathy Grimes is an editor and the education team leader at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., organizing and managing the coverage of seven writers who produce stories, analysis and special projects for Daily Press platforms, ranging from the newspaper to websites to social media sites. She joined the staff in 2006 after completing a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard University, where she also taught undergraduate and graduate journalism courses. Grimes was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2004 and 2005 for stories about No Child Left Behind and special education. She studied theater arts at San Francisco State University before pursuing a bachelor of arts in humanities at the University of Washington.

Scott Jaschik is the editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. He co-leads the editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources and interactive features. Jaschik has published articles on colleges in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and Salon. From 1999 to 2003, Jaschik was the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a graduate of Cornell University.

Felice Nudelman is executive director of education for The New York Times Company. She is responsible for developing and overseeing education initiatives, including the New York Times Knowledge Network, developed in 2007. She helped launch and is co-director of the American Democracy Project, a collaboration with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities to foster student civic engagement. She also coordinates the CCSSO / Gates Foundation EdSteps project on behalf of the Times Company. Nudelman joined The New York Times in 2000 as the college marketing manager. In 2002, she received The Times’s GrandSlam Award for her work. She has previously served as executive director for Pace University’s School of Education and as associate dean of academic affairs at Bloomfield College, where she was awarded the National Academic Advising Association’s award for Best Advising Program in the country. Nudelman serves on the Board of Managers for Epsilen LLC, the CAEL Board of Trustees, NYU-Poly Enterprise Learning Board, is a member of the Lesley University Leadership Council, and a member of the IAUP Council of Senior Advisors. She has served on the University of North Texas Board of Visitors and was Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors for The National Teachers Hall of Fame. She is an alumna of the 1995 Harvard Management Development Program (MDP), and holds a B.A. in fine arts and philosophy from Allegheny College and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute.

Jonathan Schorr is a partner in the San Francisco office of the NewSchools Venture Fund, where he leads NewSchools’ field-building efforts, including the annual Summit and the Community of Practice, and oversees NewSchools’ policy advocacy, publications and public relations. Prior to joining NewSchools, he served as director of new initiatives at the KIPP Foundation. Schorr has worked as an author, journalist and teacher. His critically acclaimed book, “Hard Lessons: The Promise of an Inner-City Charter School,” was published by Ballantine Books in the fall of 2002. Previously, Schorr was an education reporter with the Oakland Tribune, and also has written on education in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Education Week, The Nation, Teacher Magazine, the Washington Monthly, Salon.com, and other publications. His writing has won numerous awards, including a National Education Writers award and the Outstanding Young Journalist prize from the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. He taught public high school for three years in Southern California as a member of the founding corps of Teach For America. Schorr holds a degree in sociology from Yale University.

Christine Tebben is executive director of Grantmakers for Education, a Portland, Ore.-based membership organization for private and public philanthropies that support improved education outcomes for students from early childhood through higher education. Collectively, members of Grantmakers for Education invest over $2 billion each year to improve outcomes in early learning, K-12 public schools, after-school programs, and higher education. Tebben oversees and works to strengthen the organization’s activities to improve the effectiveness of education philanthropy by helping foundation trustees, CEOs and program officers improve their knowledge of education issues, trends and effective grantmaking strategies. She also cultivates board leadership and develops the national nonprofit organization’s strategy.

Greg Toppo is the national K-12 education reporter for USA Today. A graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., he taught in both public and private schools for eight years before moving into journalism. His first job was with the Santa Fe New Mexican, a 50,000-circulation daily. He worked for four years as a wire service reporter with the Associated Press, first in Baltimore and then in Washington, D.C., where he became the AP’s national K-12 education writer. He came to USA Today in 2002 and in 2005 broke the Armstrong Williams “pay for punditry” story that launched a widespread look at government propaganda. Toppo also co-led the USA Today team that in 2011 looked at educator-led cheating on standardized tests. The paper’s series prompted the Washington, D.C., inspector general to investigate high erasure rates in D.C. schools. Toppo was also a 2010 Spencer fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Scott Widmeyer founded Widmeyer Communications in 1988, building on a career in newspaper reporting and serving in major communications positions for President Jimmy Carter, Vice President Walter Mondale, U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro and the late American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker. He currently serves on the boards of the New York City Leadership Academy, the Contemporary American Theater Festival and Friend Factor. Widmeyer is a graduate of West Virginia University, where he has established two scholarship funds to benefit African-American and first-generation West Virginians seeking a degree in journalism. In 2005, Widmeyer and his firm established the Widmeyer Communications Professorship in Public Relations, the first of its kind in the nation. Widmeyer has served as a Visiting Professor at the P. I. Reed School of Journalism and has been a guest lecturer at Brown University, the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. In 2003, he received West Virginia University’s most prestigious award in journalism, the P. I. Reed Achievement Award. In 2005, then-West Virginia Governor Bob Wise bestowed upon Widmeyer the “Distinguished West Virginian Award,” the highest honor provided by the state’s chief executive, and in 2010 he was named to the PR News Hall of Fame.

Each board office term is one year and may be repeated once.

Each board member term is two years and may be repeated once.