User Profile

Founding Executive Director, National Equity Project

LaShawn Route Chatmon is the founding executive director of the National Equity Project, leading the organization's successful transition from the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BayCES). Under her leadership, the National Equity Project has become one of the leading voices in a movement to change the conversation and approach used to achieve racial equity in education. Prior to joining the National Equity Project, LaShawn served as a teacher and leader at Redwood Day School, Alameda, CA; The Wheeler School, Providence, RI; and Berkeley High School, Berkeley, CA. While at Berkeley High, she served as co-director for The Diversity Project with Dr. Pedro Noguera at the University of California at Berkeley. The Diversity Project was a school-university action research project designed to address the disparity in achievement between white students and students of color and to investigate the causes of racial separation. LaShawn is a contributing author in the book Class Dismissed: A Year in the Heart of An American High School a Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation and has presented at numerous education conferences and convenings across the country. She was a MetLife Teaching Fellow, and a 2015 LeaderSpring Fellow. LaShawn earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from University of California, Berkeley; a Masters of Arts in teaching from Brown University; and completed California State University, Sacramento's Urban Leadership Program. LaShawn is a California native and resides in Oakland, CA with her husband and their three sons. She is a Fellow of the 16th class of the Pahara - Aspen Education Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.