User Profile

Founder, Managing Partner, Bay Ed Fund

Over the last 25 years, Paul Keys has been an educator, social entrepreneur, and board member/advisor to local and national non-profits. In 2022, Paul launched the Bay Ed Fund, a community investment fund focused on ensuring all students receive a public education that allows them to thrive as adults. The fund catalyzes local community movements that transform district outcomes and experiences in our highest-need schools. The unique approach supports students, families, and educators in co-designing a shared vision for young people and leveraging best-in-class expertise to support implementing the community-led vision. Over the next decade, the Bay Ed Fund will prove a new model for systemic, sustainable district improvement by investing in multiple school systems to dramatically improve reading and math proficiency, high school graduation, and college entrance rates for more than 50,000 low-income students in the Bay Area. Previously, Paul served as an Executive Vice President and Executive Director at Teach For America (TFA) since 2010. He and his team led the strategy and integration of the work across TFA's 52 regions. Prior to his work at Teach For America, Paul was a regional manager at Score! Educational Centers and was one of the founding team members of InsideTrack, an organization that coaches students toward success in their first year of college. Paul grew up in Derry, a city in the northwest corner of Ireland. Derry was the birthplace of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. The change Paul witnessed over three decades in his hometown fuels his conviction that education is one of the most powerful tools to fight social and economic injustice. Paul holds a master's degree in the economics of education from the University of London and a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Ulster. Paul is a Fellow of the 13th class of the Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.