Gwen Baker, Director of Knowledge Management
Gwen Baker joined New Visions as Director of Knowledge Management on February 7, 2007. Most recently, Ms. Baker served as senior vice president for operations and vice president of product development with Teachscape, Inc. Ms. Baker was responsible for designing and developing Teachscape’s core library materials on mathematics and literacy, ensuring that they focused on developing teachers’ and instructional leaders’ content and pedagogical skills. Her previous positions as director of customer experience/site producer with theSauce.com and as engagement manager/lead designer with Accenture provided her with experience in business process design, information architecture, and knowledge management systems.

Lili Brown, Vice President, Development and External Affairs
Lili Brown joined New Visions in 2001. Ms. Brown has worked in non-profit management and strategic planning for 20 years. Ms. Brown has served as Deputy Director and Director of Development for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, an international organization dedicated to protecting human rights and the rights of refugees. At the Lawyers Committee, Ms. Brown initiated the organization's first capital campaign and tripled the annual operating support. Ms. Brown has also consulted with a variety of local groups on capacity building and institutional development.

Romina Carrillo, Director
Romina Carrillo joined New Visions in mid-2005. Dr. Carrillo has over fifteen years experience as a bilingual teacher, program director, and assistant superintendent in urban school districts in Calexico, San Diego, San Francisco, and Oakland, California. She has taught in teacher education and education leadership programs at Brown University and Mills College, as well as trained new teachers with Teach for America. Prior to joining New Visions, Dr. Carrillo worked for the Boston Plan for Excellence in Public Schools to design and coordinate implementation of specific instructional improvement initiatives in Boston’s public schools aimed at improving the leadership capacity of teachers, coaches, and principals.

Ron Chaluisan, Vice President of Programs
Ronald Chaluisan joined New Visions in 2002 as Director of Small Schools to oversee the New Century High Schools Initiative, a comprehensive school creation process, and to design a wide range of supports for existing small schools throughout New York City. In January 2004, Mr. Chaluisan assumed the position of Vice President of Programs, broadening his responsibilities to include the development, implementation, and assessment of programs in the divisions of Teaching and Learning, Leadership Development, and Secondary Schools. Mr. Chaluisan brings to New Visions 15 years of experience in the New York City public schools; most recently, from 1994 to 2002, Mr. Chaluisan served as the co-founder and principal of The New York City Museum School, a New Visions small school collaboration between Community School District 2 and the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Children's Museum of Manhattan, and the South Street Seaport Museum.

Beverly Donohue, Vice President, Policy and Research
Beverly Donohue joined New Visions in 2003 after spending 17 years in New York City government focusing on issues of agency and program finance and management. Ms. Donohue has served as Deputy Director of the NYC Office of Management and Budget, where she oversaw the finances of the City’s housing, economic development, cultural, transportation and environmental protection agencies, as well as the funding for the Board of Education and the City University of New York. For seven years, Ms. Donohue served as the Chief Financial Officer of the NYC school system. Ms. Donohue was responsible for developing nationally-recognized, transparent reports for educational expenditures at the school, regional and system-wide levels; developing software and changing business practices to enable school-based budgeting; instituting “placement-neutral” funding in support of special education reform and implementing sourcing strategies for commodities that saved the school system tens of millions annually.

Carol Geron, Comptroller
Carol Geron joined New Visions in 1996, first as the Fiscal Manager of New York Networks for School Renewal and currently as comptroller. Ms. Geron was a co-founder and chief financial officer of a design company and worked as Accounting Supervisor and Human Resources Coordinator for The Museum of Television and Radio. Ms. Geron also was a founding member of the Hudson Valley Children’s Museum and was a member of its Board of Directors.

Dr. Liz Gewirtzman, Director
Dr. Liz Gewirtzman has served since 2005 as project director of the Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM), a comprehensive school reform model that integrates the work of school improvement into leadership capacity building and succession planning. Dr. Gewirtzman’s previous experience with the New York City Board of Education includes: Director of Operations in Community School District 2, Project Director for the Performance Driven Budgeting initiative that resulted in the development of Galaxy, the automated school budget system, and as consultant on organizational development and students with special needs for San Diego City Schools. She was a member of the team that co-constructed the Aspiring Leader’s Program (ALPS), a collaboration between Community District 2 and the School of Public Affairs. Under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, she served as Project Director for the High School Leadership Development Program (HSLDP). She co-authored a book, with Sandra J. Stein, on the program, Principal Training on the Ground: Ensuring Highly Qualified Leadership, and served as the lead facilitator for the first middle school cohort of the New York City Leadership Academy Aspiring Principals Program. Dr. Gewirtzman is currently a Distinguished Lecturer on the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, of the City University of New York.

Robert L. Hughes, President
Robert L. Hughes was appointed President of New Visions in June 2000. A prominent lawyer, Mr. Hughes formerly served as Deputy Director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of parent organizations, community school boards, concerned citizens and advocacy groups that seeks to reform New York State's education finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. Mr. Hughes recently served as Co-Counsel in the nationally-watched Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York state constitutional challenge. Prior to joining Campaign for Fiscal Equity in 1993, Mr. Hughes was Deputy Director for Advocates for Children, a leading non-profit agency long active in securing quality and equal public education services for New York City's most impoverished and vulnerable families. Mr. Hughes received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his law degree from Stanford Law School. Mr. Hughes' articles on public education have appeared in the Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Connecticut Law Review, the Journal of Law and Education and the Yale Journal of Law and Policy.

Stacy J. Martin, Chief Financial Officer
Stacy Martin joined New Visions in 2003. Ms. Martin has extensive experience managing the financial, budgeting, accounting and administrative functions for a variety of private and public sector entities. Prior to joining New Visions, Ms. Martin served as the Comptroller for Sportvision, Inc., the sports industry's leading media technology company. Previously, Ms. Martin was a senior advisor at the Department of Education, working with the Chief Financial Officer on regulations governing school-based budgeting, and handling negotiations with the Mayor's office on interagency financial and service delivery matters, including the transfer of school safety to the NYPD. Ms. Martin has also served as an Assistant Director in the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget, responsible for the capital, revenue and operating budgets of the City's eight housing and economic development agencies, and as Director of Operations for the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Theresa McKenna, Director of Development
Theresa McKenna joined New Visions in 2004 as the Director of Development. Ms. McKenna brings over 20 years of experience in fund development, marketing, strategic partnerships and special events management. Ms. McKenna began her career as Executive Director of United Way in the U.S. Virgin Islands. While with the United Way, Ms. McKenna served in various leadership positions over the years, including Senior Vice President of Resource Development for the New York Tri-State region where she was responsible for overseeing a $100 million regional campaign. Ms. McKenna later joined the United Way’s national organization as Vice President of the NFL Partnership Group, overseeing the award-winning NFL/United Way advertising campaign. Most recently, Ms. McKenna served as a consultant to Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, advising their CEO on national fund development strategies.

Shane Santo Mulhern, Senior Executive
Shane Santo Mulhern joined New Visions as Senior Executive of Transfer Schools in 2006. He previously held a number of senior-level positions with the New York City Department of Education, including executive director of the Office of Youth Development and School-Community Services, chief of staff of the Office of Youth Development, and policy projects manager for the senior counselor to the Chancellor. He has also served as the director of youth programs at Southside Community Mission, as the site coordinator for Northside Catholic Academy, and as a teacher at St. Joseph’s High School, all located in Brooklyn.

Gloria Rakovic, Director
Gloria Rakovic joined New Visions in 2002 having served as a principal in urban and suburban environments including three public New York City high schools. Dr. Rakovic has an extensive background in high school redesign, alternative education, and group facilitation. She helped found and served as principal of Park East High School and the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. Dr. Rakovic has also worked on the design teams of five other high schools in the city.

Amy Rosen, Chief Operating Officer
Amy Rosen joined New Visions as Chief Operating Officer on February 1, 2007. Through her leadership positions in the private and public sectors, Ms. Rosen has led many organizations through transformational change. In recent years, she has played an increasingly active role in the field of public education. As the founding partner of Public Private Strategy Group, a management advisory firm, she served as the project manager for the design and launch of the Empowerment Zone Project for the New York City Department of Education. She has also served as a policy advisor for the newly elected mayor of Newark, NJ. She currently serves as the chair of the board of directors for TEAM Academy, a group of highly successful charter school in Newark, and on the board of NJ SEEDS, a statewide nonprofit organization that identifies and provides high-achieving, low-income students with academic enrichment opportunities. Ms. Rosen was a 2004 Fellow at the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy.

Adam Rubin, Director, Policy and Research
Adam Rubin joined New Visions in 2003. Prior to joining New Visions, Mr. Rubin had worked for over ten years in management roles in the non-profit sector in the fields of education and economic development. Mr. Rubin began his career teaching and collaboratively managing an education reform program in the Oakland, California public schools. Mr. Rubin took that experience and founded a non-profit working on issues of classroom reform and equity in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa, where he served as Executive Director. Returning to New York, Mr. Rubin worked on economic development efforts in Long Island City as Director of Special Projects, incorporating community development and commercial real estate marketing. Most recently, Mr. Rubin founded and managed a consulting firm doing organizational development and strategy in the non-profit sector.

Roberta Trachtman, Director of Teaching and Learning
Roberta Trachtman joined New Visions in 2005. She works with colleagues to create, implement, and sustain inter-institutional collaborations to support teachers’ development as learners and leaders. Driven by her initial experiences as an urban secondary school Spanish teacher and community interpreter, Dr. Trachtman has spent her career engaging with school and university-based educators to change teacher and administrator preparation and practice. From her first efforts as a doctoral student to her most recent inquiry with the faculty and staff in a new Chicago public school, her research has examined the connections between individual and inter-institutional collaboration and adult and student learning. Most significant among these research activities was the multi-year role she played as the principal investigator on the NCATE Professional Development School Standards and Assessment Field-Test Project.

Joan Walrond, Director of Human Resources and Administration
Joan Walrond joined New Visions in 2002 after serving for ten years in a similar capacity as head of Human Resources and Administration for Action Technologies, a software development company in the San Francisco Bay area. Ms. Walrond’s interest in public education began during a short teaching assignment at Seward Park High School. Her career moved into the nonprofit sector with administrative positions with Special Libraries Association and later as Office Manager at the Association of Episcopal Colleges.