Our Board of Directors
EFF’s Board of Directors is comprised of leaders who are experts in their fields and have a passion for educational equity.
Marlon Marshall
Chief Executive Officer, City Fund
Marlon Marshall is the Chief Executive Officer of City Fund, where he leads the organization’s efforts to ensure all students have access to high-quality public schools. In his role, Marlon brings a wealth of leadership experience from the highest levels of government, campaign strategy, and organizational development to advance City Fund’s mission of driving transformative change in public education.
Before joining City Fund, Marlon was a founding partner at 270 Strategies, where he helped organizations build impactful campaigns to mobilize communities and achieve meaningful change. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Director in the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, where he worked to connect everyday Americans to the policymaking process. Marlon served in leadership roles in the 2016 Hillary for America campaign and the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, overseeing grassroots operations that engaged millions of volunteers across the country.
Marlon serves on the board of the Equitable Facilities Fund, an organization dedicated to improving access to affordable facilities financing for public charter schools. Marlon earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and his Master’s degree in Policy Management from Georgetown University. A passionate fan of all things Kansas Jayhawks, where he serves on the Alumni Association Board, he now resides in Denver, Colorado, with his wife Stacy and their two daughters.
Aarthi Sowrirajan
Director, Senior Portfolio Manager, BlackRock
Aarthi Sowrirajan is a Senior Portfolio Manager for BlackRock’s Alternative Solutions Group (ASG) within BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI). An experienced impact investor, Aarthi manages the implementation of the BlackRock Impact Opportunities (BIO) Fund – a private markets, multi-alternatives fund focused on investing through a racial equity lens. Previously, she worked for Turner Impact Capital, a real estate investor and developer, managing the charter school development process from start to finish.
Aarthi is an active board member of the Equitas Charter School. She has a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Marc Sternberg
Co-Founder & Managing Director, A-Street
Marc Sternberg is Co-Founder and Managing Director of A-Street. Marc currently serves on the board of Great Minds. Prior to launching A-Street, Marc served as K-12 Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation where he led the foundation’s initiatives to improve elementary and secondary education for all of our nation’s children by empowering parents with quality options. Marc previously served as Senior Deputy Chancellor at the New York City Department of Education and education advisor on policy and strategy to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Marc founded the Bronx Lab School, an unscreened New York City public high school, and served as its principal from 2004-2009. He was a 1995 Teach For America corps member in the Bronx. Marc holds a B.A. in politics from Princeton University, and a joint M.B.A. and Masters in Education from Harvard University. He was selected as a 2009-2010 White House Fellow.
Kevin Hall
President & CEO
Charter School Growth Fund
Kevin has served as CEO of CSGF since 2009. Before joining CSGF, Kevin was chief operating officer of the Broad Foundation, where he led various aspects of the foundation’s grant investment strategy. Prior to Broad, he co-founded and led business development for Chancellor Beacon Academies, a manager of charter and private schools across the United States. Previously, he ran a division of infoUSA and worked at McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs, and Teach for America. Kevin taught elementary school in central Los Angeles.
Kevin earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and BA from Swarthmore College.
Scott Pearson
Former Executive Director
DC Public Charter Schools
Scott Pearson is the former Executive Director of the DC Public Charter School Board. In this role, Scott implemented significant reforms in how the Board approved and oversaw charter schools, making it a national model for charter school authorizing. Previously, Scott served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy of the Office of Innovation and Improvement for the U.S. Department of Education. He also co-founded Leadership Public Schools, a network of college-prep public charter high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Scott is the former Vice President for Corporate Development at AOL and a former management consultant at Bain and Company.
Scott is currently serves as the Mayor Pro Tem of the town of Mountain Village, Colorado, as a board member with the Facilities Investment Fund at Civic Builders, and on the finance committee of the National Association of Public Charter Schools. He is the former Board Chair of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Wesleyan University, a Master in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a Master in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.