User Profile

President, Weiss Associates

Joanne Weiss is the former chief of staff to the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Prior to taking this position she was Director of the Race to the Top Fund at the US Department of Education, a program designed to catalyze innovation and restore America's global leadership in public K-12 education. Previously, she served as Partner and Chief Operating Officer at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she oversaw the organization's operations, as well as investment strategy and management assistance for many of NewSchools' ventures nationally and on the west coast. As part of this work, she served on the boards of Aspire Public Schools, Education for Change, Green Dot Public Schools, Leadership Public Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, Revolution Foods, Rocketship Education, and Teachscape. Prior to joining NewSchools Venture Fund, Joanne was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build their teams quickly and well. Before her tenure at Claria, Joanne spent twenty years in the design, development, and marketing of technology-based products and services for education. She was Senior Vice President of Product Development at Pensare, an e-learning company that created business innovation programs for the Fortune 500 market. Prior to Pensare, Joanne was co-founder, interim CEO, and Vice President of Products and Technologies at Academic Systems, a company that helps hundreds of thousands of college students prepare for college-level work in mathematics and English. In the early 1990s, Joanne was Executive Vice President of Business Operations at Wasatch Education Systems, where she led the product development, customer service, and operations organizations for this K-12 educational technology company. She began her career as Vice President of Education R&D at Wicat Systems, where she was responsible for the development of nearly 100 multimedia curriculum products for K-12 schools. Joanne has a passion for education, and has spent much of her career pioneering innovative ways of using technology to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. She holds a degree in biochemistry from Princeton University. She is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute-NewSchools Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.