Board Members
Deepak Bhargava
Deepak Bhargava is the executive director of nonprofit Center for Community Change. Under his three year tenure, the center has seen a significant increase in funding and for the first time in the organization’s 37-year history, has relocated its national headquarters to the historic U Street corridor from Georgetown. For nearly four decades, the Center for Community Change has helped thousands of urban and rural communities nationwide to organize for positive change by uniting low-income people across lines of race, ethnicity, geography and gender to equip them with the tools to change public policies and demand public attention for issues of social and economic justice. Prior to his appointment as the executive director, Bhargava served as the director of public policy for seven years at the Center for Community Change. In that capacity, he worked on housing, budget, tax, immigration, welfare, and other issues affecting low-income people.
He also directed the Center’s National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition of grassroots groups established in 2000 to give low-income people a voice in the reauthorization of the federal welfare law and other areas critical to poor people. Prior to joining the center, Bhargava was the legislative director at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), where he gained broad experience in community reinvestment and housing finance issues. Born in Mysore, India, Bhargava’s family immigrated to the United States when he was a child. He grew up in New York City and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. Bhargava’s vision is to spark an enduring movement for social change and assure that the voice of the poor is an integral part of the national dialog.
Greg Jobin-Leeds
Greg Jobin-Leeds has made a career out of launching and nurturing successful, high-impact public policy organizations. His talent for recruiting effective leaders and guiding their efforts to break new ground has led to milestone victories for the nation’s historically underserved children and most under-represented families. Greg is Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of the award winning Schott Foundation for Public Education. Under Greg’s leadership, Schott began funding the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) in 1993 and later helped found the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE). Through litigation, legislation, media and grassroots organizing, both organizations’ efforts led to winning $7.4 billion annually for high-need New York schools. Schott won the Council of Foundation’s 2007 Critical Impact Award for this victory. In 1999, Schott recruited the leadership and provided the start-up funding for the Early Education for All (EEA) campaign in Massachusetts, which successfully advocated for a universal pre-kindergarten education bill. In 2003, Schott published State Report Cards on “Public Education and Black Male Students,” which generated a national consciousness, leading many to confront historical inequities and rethink how to educate boys of color. In 2004, the Foundation created The Schott Fellowship for Early Care and Education at Cambridge College to train new public policy leaders of color.
Greg co-founded Access Strategies Fund, which helps disenfranchised communities harness their collective democratic power to improve their lives. Access has played a leading role in closing the racial gap in voter turnout in targeted communities and overturning racially unjust gerrymandered districts which has led to progressive leaders of color being elected. www.accessstrategies.org
Instrumental in the launch of the 501(c) (4) League of Education Voters of America in 2005, Greg led the recruitment of the founding board. The League’s mission is to create the political will to transform the nation’s public education system by holding public officials accountable for serving the needs of all children. www.leagueofeducationvoters.com
At the Institute for Student Achievement (ISA), a leading high school redesign organization, Greg co-chaired the Strategic Direction and Oversight Committee, and recruited ISA’s first President, a former Superintendent-of-the-Year. These leadership changes facilitated ISA transforming large high schools into small inclusive learning communities with tremendous student outcomes. www.studentachievement.org
As a founding Board member, Greg helped manage the original research, recruit the leadership and launch the Alliance for Excellent Education — now a highly effective national advocate for public high school policy. http://www.all4ed.org
Similarly, in partnership with Teacher’s College at Columbia University, Greg helped launch The National Academy for Excellent Teaching to improve teaching in urban schools. http://nafet.teacherworks.net
He is the founding chair of Progressive Majority’s Leadership Circle, which is highly successful at electing bold state candidates committed to racial and economic justice, public education and health care. www.progressivemajority.org.
Greg is a founding executive board member of Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s One Voice PAC, which is successful in electing progressive federal candidates who have strong platforms on public education, racial and economic justice. www.onevoicepac.org.
Greg founded the CMP Media Foundation, served on the corporate board of CMP Media and currently serves on committees of six investment portfolios.
As the son of immigrants who escaped Nazi persecution, Greg lives the commitment of fighting for fairness and social justice. He is driven by the fundamental belief that excellence is the result of inclusion not exclusion. Greg has been dedicated to educational excellence throughout his career. Early in his career he worked as a high school English teacher, then he trained adult literacy teachers, and more recently he has worked to increase political access for disenfranchised populations. He has a Master’s degree from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and more than 25 years of education, public policy, media, community organizing and leadership experience.
Daniel Leeds
Daniel Leeds chairs the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy organization. The Alliance works to transform high schools so that every child graduates prepared for postsecondary education and success in life. Dan also chairs the League of Education Voters, a political organization that focuses on building a state-based national education movement, as well as the League’s New York affiliate, NY EdPAC.
Leeds is also the President of Fulcrum Investments LLC, a private investment firm. Until the sale of CMP Media in1999, Leeds was President of International Publishing and a member of the Office of the President. CMP, a leading media company, publishes titles such as InformationWeek, Computer Reseller News and Electronic Engineering Times. The company was cited as “One of the Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune Magazine and Working Women Magazine.
Since moving to Washington in 1999, Leeds has been active in civic affairs, with a particular interest in education and public policy development. Dan is on the Board of the Teachers Institute of Washington, DC. He is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board for the MIT Sloan School of Management, a member of the Brookings Institution’s Business Council and an Advisory Board member of the Brookings Institution’s Center for the United States and Europe. With his wife, Sunita, he co-chairs the Enfranchisement Foundation, which works with charities to develop programs that can help break the cycle of poverty and ignorance. He earned a Master’s Degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow and a BS in Engineering and a BA in Economics from Cornell University.
Sunita Leeds
Sunita Leeds was born in India and immigrated to the US at the age of 7. Sunita met her husband, Dan, at Cornell University. She converted to Judaism and they were married in 1981. Sunita’s primary focus is raising their four children.
In addition, with Dan, she co-chairs The Enfranchisement Foundation, which focuses on breaking the cycles of poverty and intolerance in the United States as well as on women’s issues. Sunita is on the Boards of the Maret School, NY EdPAC, the League of Education Voters of America and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Jewish Democratic Council. She is also very active in Democratic Party affairs.
Sunita moved to Washington, D.C., from Paris, France, where she was president of the Parent Faculty Association at Marymount School and treasurer of Kehilat Gesher- the Anglo-French Jewish Congregation, which she helped found.
Prior to moving to France, Sunita headed a software development team at Bell Labs.
Sunita earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Southern California and a bachelor of arts from Cornell University in Math.
Reverend John Vaughn
Reverend John Vaughn serves as the program director for The Twenty-First Century Foundation (21CF) based in Harlem, New York City, whose mission is to promote strategic Black philanthropy and to support social justice work within the Black community throughout the United States. Vaughn previously served as Executive Director at the Peace Development Fund in Amherst, Massachusetts. From 1996 to 2000, Vaughn was Minister for Education and Social Justice at the Riverside Church in New York City. In the 1980s, Vaughn served as an Action Assistant at Riverside, where he facilitated the re-structuring of and coordinated the Christian Social Action Committee, and as the Assistant Minister for a Methodist congregation in San Francisco.
Rev. Vaughn has also served as the Director for Community Development at the Community Training and Assistance Center (CTAC) in Boston, Massachusetts, providing community-based organizations with training and technical assistance in community revitalization strategies and organizational development. Prior to that, Vaughn served as the Executive Director of East Harlem Interfaith in New York City, a coalition of over forty congregations and religious organizations worked together on vital neighborhood social issues.
Additionally, he serves on several boards, including East Harlem Block Schools, New Jersey Affordable Housing Network, Community Building Initiative, and the Donald Jacobs Internship Partnership, where he is the founding chairperson. Vaughn remains on the National Ecumenical Consultation planning committee, National Council of Churches. Vaughn received his undergraduate degree from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and his Master of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
