Team and Leadership

Dr. Paul Goren serves as the Director of the Center for Education Efficacy, Excellence and Equity at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Working with an on-line education tech provider (who touches over 8-10 million kids daily in predominantly urban schools), the Center aims to harvest data for studies on student success (across racial, gender and economic groups), learning and learning loss during the pandemic, and pathways students take in acquiring knowledge and skills in English Language Arts and Mathematics.

From 2014 to 2019, Paul served as superintendent in Evanston/Skokie School District 65. Located just north of Chicago, the district serves nearly 8,000 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.A champion for social emotional learning, Paul held the position of Senior Vice President for Program at The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) prior to his superintendent appointment. He has held several senior advisory roles focused on educational practice, policy, and research with large public school systems, including Minneapolis Public Schools, San Diego City Schools, and Chicago Public Schools. Paul also directed the education policy studies division of the National Governors’ Association (NGA) in Washington, DC and served as the Director of Child and Youth Development for the MacArthur Foundation and as the Senior Vice President at The Spencer Foundation.

Paul received a BA from Williams College, a Masters of Public Affairs degree from the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas, and a PhD from Stanford University.

Nithin Iyengar is a partner in Bridgespan’s San Francisco office. Since joining the organization in 2010, Nithin has been a leader in developing Bridgespan’s Education Practice. Nithin has worked with a range of foundations, organizations, and government agencies pursuing large-scale initiatives focused on educator growth and development and school turnaround and transformation. Additionally, he has supported multiple efforts to develop high-quality, equitable career pathways to enable students to complete high school, graduate with a post-secondary credential, and enter a family-sustaining, personally relevant career. Stemming from his work with districts and charter organizations in particular, he has co-authored a number of papers including, “School District Innovation Zones,” “Should Donors Invest in School Districts,” and “Rethinking High School Turnarounds.”

Nithin has always been committed to building a high-quality and diverse team at Bridgespan. He has championed and led multiple efforts to reshape how Bridgespan recruits and retains all staff and particularly staff of color. Since 2017, Nithin has led recruitment and hiring of incoming staff for the San Francisco office.

Nithin joined Bridgespan after seven years as an educator and district leader working in prior roles in the Oakland Unified School District as coordinator of Portfolio Management and the School District of Philadelphia as chief of staff to the School Reform Commission. His career began in the classroom teaching high school math and later working as an instructional coach supporting new math and science teachers.

In addition to his work at Bridgespan, Nithin serves on the Board of Directors of the Children’s Creativity Museum – one of the leading creativity-focused museums in the United States. Nithin earned a BA in Computer Science for Harvard University; an MA in Educational Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University; and an Ed.M in Educational Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Magaly Lavadenz, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor and founding Executive Director of the Center for Equity for English Learners in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. Her research addresses the intersections and impact of policies and practices for culturally and linguistically diverse students, their teachers and school leaders.

She has held various leadership positions as President of Californians Together, California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), the California Association for Bilingual Teacher Education and the California Council on Teacher Education. Her published work includes Questioning our Practices: Bilingual Teacher-Researchers and Transformative Inquiry and Latino Civil Rights in Education: La Lucha Sigue.

Shruti, who currently serves as NTC Board Chair, is a Partner at New Profit, where she leads one of New Profit’s domains – a collaborative of social entrepreneurs and funders aligning actions to integrate the concept of investing in individual learners through personalized learning and social emotional development into mainstream public education. Prior to that, Shruti led New Profit’s portfolio management practice, ensuring organizations were receiving the support and resources they needed both from New Profit and from Monitor Group through pro-bono strategic engagements. She also led efforts to measure, evaluate, and report aggregate and organization-specific performance. In addition to domain management responsibilities, Shruti currently serves on the boards of BUILD, New Teacher Center, and Peace First, supporting their efforts to create and execute against aggressive plans to accelerate their impact.

Shruti’s family has a history of giving back to communities in different ways with courage and perseverance. Her grandmother was the ad-hoc matriarch of the neighborhood in India where Shruti’s mother grew up. Among other things, Shruti’s grandmother enlisted a local gynecologist to work with the domestic worker community to provide education and assistance with family planning, and to help break the cycle of poverty perpetuated by high fertility rates and overpopulation. Shruti’s father was born in Multan, a region of South Asia known for producing people with courage in the face of all kinds of danger. She feels that this combined background necessarily led her to New Profit where she now has the opportunity to work daily to boldly forge new paths to drive poverty alleviation and social justice.

Shruti joined New Profit in 2006 while finishing a joint M.B.A./M.P.A. Prior to graduate school, she managed a campaign for State Assembly in California while starting up a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping critically ill workers. Before that, she spent seven years working in the private sector, initially as an engineer at Honeywell, an aerospace engine manufacturer, and later in a series of quality management positions at Howmet Castings, an aerospace casting manufacturer, and Jabil Circuit, an electronics manufacturing services company. Shruti holds an S.B. in chemistry from MIT, an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and an M.P.A. from Harvard Kennedy School.

When not rigorously pursuing social change, Shruti meditates, loves cooking-especially trying out new dishes-and works hard to spoil her nieces.