ANNOUNCEMENT (March 10, 2020): Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, NASBE made the difficult decision to cancel Legislative Conference 2020. Read more from our announcement here. 

Ary Amerikaner is vice president for P-12 policy, practice, and research at The Education Trust. Previously, Amerikaner was deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she helped manage the transition from No Child Left Behind, to flexibility waivers, to the Every Student Succeeds Act. She promoted equitable funding for high-need schools and equitable access to effective educators. Amerikaner clerked for a federal judge, was a legislative assistant for U.S. Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, and was an education research assistant at the Urban Institute.

Brooke Axiotis is president of NASBE’s Board of Directors and president of the Iowa State Board of Education. She is also Drake Law School’s director of academic success programs and a member of the Iowa State Bar. She serves on the boards of Goodwill of Central Iowa, the Urban Ag Academy, and Links Inc.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClear Media Group. He received the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting of the Presidency and the Aldo Beckman award. Previously, Cannon was the DC bureau chief for Reader’s Digest and covered the White House for National Journal and Baltimore Sun. He was a fellow-in-residence at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and lectured at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, George Washington University, and the Aspen Institute.

Peggy Carr is the associate commissioner of the assessment division for the National Center for Education Statistics in the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. She is responsible for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Carr also was chief statistician for the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education and the research methodologist of Howard University’s Statistical and Research Computer Laboratory. In 2008, President George Bush awarded Carr the Meritorious Executive Rank Award for sustained superior accomplishments in management of programs.

Frank Edelblut is commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education and serves on the National Assessment Governing Board. He began his career as a certified public accountant with a large international accounting firm and became chief financial officer for a public company before starting his own company. Edelblut was a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and serves as trustee for the University System of New Hampshire, ex-officio trustee for the Community College System of New Hampshire, and member of the New Hampshire Higher Education Commission.

Anna Kimsey Edwards is chief advocacy officer and co-founder at Whiteboard Advisors. She led district and state outreach on behalf of some of the most successful companies and nonprofit organizations in education, including Rosetta Stone, Code.org, and the College Board. Kimsey Edwards currently serves as vice-chair on the board of Share Fair Nation. She was chair of the National Cherry Blossom Festival’s primary fundraising event and served as a local advisory board member to Jumpstart, an early childhood organization. She previously worked in CNN’s DC Bureau for National Correspondent Bob Franken and CNN Productions.

Robert Hull is NASBE’s president and CEO. Hull came to NASBE as the inaugural director of the Center for College, Career, and Civic Readiness following a 40-year career in education reform at the school, district, and state levels. After starting his career as an elementary school teacher in West Virginia’s Putnam County School District, Hull served as a principal for eight years prior to moving to district administrative positions. He served as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction and directed early childhood education, federal programs, and community outreach for the school district during his tenure there. In 2010, Hull joined the West Virginia Department of Education as assistant superintendent of schools in the division of teaching and learning. As the associate state superintendent of schools, Hull oversaw state programs on educator quality, early learning, career and technical innovation, federal programs, and policy development and deployment for Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments. 

Paul Katnik is assistant commissioner of the Missouri Office of Educator Quality. He has been in education for over three decades working with K-12 children as both a teacher and a building principal. He has served at the Missouri Department of Education for over 10 years and has been instrumental in coordinating the state’s model educator evaluation system, revising teacher and leader preparation programs, developing the state’s educator equity plan, and creating the Missouri Leadership Development System.

Julia Kaufman is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Her research focuses on how states and school systems can support high-quality instruction and student learning, as well as methods for measuring educator perceptions and instruction. Kaufman has also served as a researcher for projects intended to support school administrators and teachers to learn from data and continuously improve, and she has led projects to develop innovative measures of instructional practice in areas of mathematics instruction and student-centered learning.

Reg Leichty, co-founder of Foresight Law + Policy, advises national education associations, state education agencies, school districts, nonprofit leaders, and companies about federal education, student data privacy, and technology law. His work includes a focus on ESEA, FERPA, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He counsels a wide range of entities about how to work effectively with Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the FCC, and frequently speaks and writes about emerging policy and legal issues in education reform.

Victor Lenz, Jr., joined the Missouri State Board of Education in 2013. He worked in the Lindbergh School District in St. Louis, Missouri, as a teacher and administrator, ending his career there as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. For 10 years, he served on the Lindbergh Schools Board of Education and was president of the Missouri School Boards Association from 2011 to 2012.

David C. Quam is council at Dentons and co-leads Dentons 50, the firm’s 50-state advocacy network. He has represented clients before all levels and branches of local, state, and federal government, acted as a spokesperson to top-tier regional and national media outlets, advocated for clients’ priorities during presidential and gubernatorial transitions, and developed bipartisan policy solutions to complex state and federal policy issues. Previously, Quam was deputy executive director of the National Governors Association.

Margaret “Macke” Raymond is a distinguished research fellow at Hoover Institution. She has served as founder and director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University since its inception in 1999. Raymond is a regular source for local and national media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Denver Post. She was selected as a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow in recognition of her leadership in U.S. education policy.

Elizabeth Ross is vice president of partnerships at the National Council on Teacher Quality, where she oversees organizational strategy and engagement with educational leaders in states, districts, and teacher preparation programs. She also teaches legal writing and education law at Georgetown University Law Center and American University School of Education. Previously, Ross was a third-grade teacher at Simon Elementary School in Washington, DC, and worked at the U.S. Department of Education on initiatives including ESEA flexibility, Excellent Educators for All, and regulations and guidance under ESSA.

Ryan Saunders is policy advisor on the policy and educator quality teams at the Learning Policy Institute. Previously, he worked at the Council of Chief State School Officers, supporting educator preparation reform at the state level through the Network for Transforming Educator Preparation. Saunders also taught high school social studies and literature in Turkey, the Dominican Republic, and Denver, where he served as a teacher leader for the Literacy Design Collaborative in the public school system.

David Steiner is director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and professor of education at Johns Hopkins University. He currently serves on the Maryland State Board of Education and the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence. He previously was commissioner of education for New York State, the Klara and Larry Silverstein Dean at the Hunter College School of Education, and director of education at the National Endowment for the Arts.

Matthew Tibbitts is the student member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and, subsequently, is chair of the State Student Advisory Council. He is currently a senior at Ludlow High School, where he serves as vice-president of the senior class, president of the student council, president of the National Honor Society, and president of the Tri-M Music Honor Society. Tibbitts also serves on advisory boards for the Ludlow CARES Coalition and the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office and is a clerk at the Gove Law Office.

Margie Vandeven is Missouri’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education. Vandeven joined the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2005 as a supervisor of the Missouri School Improvement Program before serving as director of accountability data and school improvement, assistant commissioner in the Office of Quality Schools, and deputy commissioner of the Division of Learning Services. She was appointed commissioner by the Missouri State Board of Education in December 2014 and served in that capacity until December 2017. She was reappointed in January 2019, after serving as director of educational partnerships for the SAS Institute.

Joan Wodiska, former Virginia state board member