Joanne Weiss chairs the A-Street Investment Committee and is an independent consultant to organizations on education policies, programs, and technologies. She focuses on driving systems-level education change through high-impact policymaking, grantmaking, and investing. Her current work centers on improving the academic core in K-12 schools through standards, curriculum, assessment, professional learning, and talent structures. She works primarily with state policymakers, national nonprofit service providers, foundations, curriculum developers, and school systems.

From 2009-2013, she served in the Obama Administration as chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and director of the federal Race to the Top program. Prior to that, Joanne was the Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. She began her career in ed tech – first leading curriculum R&D, then leading companies that pioneered technology-based approaches to solving teaching and learning challenges in K-12 and higher education. Joanne is a former Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab; a Fellow for Georgetown University’s FutureEd; a Trustee for the National Council on Education and the Economy; a Director of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; a former visiting professor in education policy at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs; and a fellow in the inaugural cohort of the Aspen/Pahara Education Leadership Fellowship. She holds a degree in biochemistry from Princeton University and lives with her husband in Washington, D.C.