David C. Banks is Chancellor of New York City Public Schools, the largest school system in the nation. Appointed by Mayor Eric Adams on January 1, 2022, Chancellor Banks is reimagining the school experience to build bright starts and bold futures for all New York City children.

In the spring of 2023, Chancellor Banks launched NYC Reads(Open external link), a transformative effort to align literacy instruction across the entire school system to the science of reading, an initiative that includes professional learning and job-embedded coaching for thousands of teachers. He has also dramatically expanded career-connected learning, such as paid internships, via FutureReadyNYC, Modern Youth Apprenticeship(Open external link), and other similar programs, which collectively serve hundreds of high schools, with plans to grow.

In addition, Chancellor Banks has prioritized safety, health, and wellness through the Project Pivot(Open external link) initiative, which has grown to 250 schools, and daily mindfulness in all classrooms. He increased supports for students with disabilities by creating a Special Education Advisory Council and adding more than 1,000 seats to NYCPS’ highly effective specialized programs. His administration also offered full-day summer learning and fun, two years in a row, to 110,000 K-8 students in the Summer Rising(Open external link) program—the largest such program in New York City’s history. Under Chancellor Banks’s leadership, overall school enrollment increased in the 2023-2024 school year for the first time in eight years.

Chancellor Banks started his career as a school safety officer, after which he began his first teaching job at P.S. 167. He served as an assistant principal at P.S. 191 before becoming a founding principal at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice and then at The Eagle Academy for Young Men, the first in a network of innovative all-boys public schools in New York City and Newark, N.J. The Chancellor later served as President and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation.

Chancellor Banks is also an author and thought leader, recognized throughout his career as a defining voice on empowering young men of color, and the Eagle Academy model he pioneered has expanded nationally via the Eagle Institute.

For over 30 years, the Chancellor has been a member of One Hundred Black Men of New York, where he served on the Board of Directors. He is a co-founder of Black EdFluencers United, an organization dedicated to influencing and developing the capacity of Black educators, and has also served as a board member for the International Boys’ Schools Coalition, the co-chair of New York City Young Men’s Initiative, and a founding board member for the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color.

Chancellor Banks has been recognized by City & State New York on their Education Power 100 and NYC Power 100(Open external link) lists and was featured on Crain’s 2021 list(Open external link) of notable Black executives. He served on the NYC Mayor’s Taskforce to Reopen Schools in 2020 and on the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce from 2018 to 2020.

The Chancellor is a native New Yorker and a proud graduate of New York City Public Schools. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and earned his Juris Doctorate from St. John’s University School of Law. He participated in the original cohort of the Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished Principals in 2003 and holds an honorary doctorate in education from Wheelock College.

Dyllan Brown-Bramble is a NY-based privacy and cybersecurity associate at a global law firm. At his firm, Dyllan maintains an active pro bono practice advising early-stage entrepreneurs and small businesses. He also serves on the VOLS Pro Bono Advocates Council and the junior board for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. While in law school, he was a Tech Law & Policy Scholar, represented clients in the Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic, was a research assistant at the Center on Privacy & Technology, and was a teaching assistant for Computer Programming for Lawyers and Legal Communication Design. Before law school, Dyllan attended Rutgers University where he was a Braven Fellow and a part of the Honors College.

Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is the eighth chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the first educator of color and first Latino to lead the nation’s largest urban public university which serves 233,000 degree-seeking students across 25 New York City campuses with an operating budget of $4.1 billion. To build on CUNY’s unrivaled role as an engine of economic mobility, Matos Rodríguez has focused on removing barriers to students’ success and redoubled CUNY’s emphasis on the career outcomes of its graduates, developing a series of public-private partnerships with some of New York’s largest employers and new pipelines for students to enter the workforce. An accomplished and award-winning historian who worked at three CUNY campuses before his appointment as chancellor in 2019, Matos Rodríguez is driven by CUNY’s mission of providing a first-rate public education to all students regardless of means or background and the interconnected role the University plays in lifting New York. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and a doctorate in history from Columbia University.

Rutgers University–Newark Interim Chancellor Jeffrey Robinson is an internationally known author and co-founder of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School. His broad academic and professional background spans business, the social sciences, public policy, and engineering. Since 2008, Robinson has been on the faculty of management and global business at Rutgers Business School. His work addresses community and economic development issues for urban metropolitan areas in the United States and abroad. He has produced grant-funded research projects on high-growth oriented African American women entrepreneurs, social innovation, and minority representation in technology entrepreneurship. He is the co-editor, alongwith Johanna Mair and Kai Hockerts, of the research volumes Social Entrepreneurship, International Perspectives in Social Entrepreneurship, and Values and Opportunities in Social Entrepreneurship. His most recent manuscripts are related to urban social innovation, indigenous social enterprises, and entrepreneurship for economic development. In 2021, Robinson was named the Prudential Chair in Business and was named Rutgers-Newark Provost in 2022.For the past five years, Robinson has partnered with the federal government to develop programs and initiatives that are intended to make the tech sector more inclusive, an effort that is funded by the National Science Foundation. Much of Robinson’s early work to advance social entrepreneurship as a driver for economic development was done through The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED). As co-founding assistant director, he helped to create programs that have supported more than 500 entrepreneurs in the region.Robinson is the co-author of two books published by HarperCollins Leadership, including Black Faces in White Places: 10 Game-Changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness, which gives Black professionals advice on navigating workplaces where they are in the minority. It was published in 2010.The sequel, published in 2022, is Black Faces in High Places: 10 Strategic Actions for Black Professionals to Reach the Top and Stay There, which won a 2023 Axiom Award, one of the top honors for books about business. Both books were co-authored with Rutgers alumnus Randal Pinkett, Robinson’s long-time friend and business partner, who rose to fame after he refused an offer to share his win on The Apprentice, sparking a national conversation about racism in the workplace.Robinson, who was born in East Orange and raised in Parsippany, holds five academic degrees spanning engineering, urban studies, and business. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies at Rutgers College and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at Rutgers School of Engineering, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering Management from Georgia Institute of Technology as a GEM Fellow, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.Robinson is the recipient of the Aspen Institute’s Social Impact Faculty Pioneer Award for his research, service and teaching activities at the intersection of entrepreneurship and society. His course, Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, was recognized as a model of Innovative Entrepreneurship Education by the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Over his 25-year academic career, he has been the keynote speaker or presenter at international events and conferences on six continents.

John B. King, Jr. is the 15th Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), the largest comprehensive system of public higher education in the United States. As Chancellor, King established four pillars of work for his vision of SUNY: student success; diversity, equity, and inclusion; research and scholarship; and economic growth and upward mobility. Under his leadership, which began in January 2023, the State University has seen its largest operating aid increase in over 20 years, including double-digit percentage increases for every state-operated campus and dedicated recurring annual funding of $10 million for each mental health services, services for students with disabilities, internships, and research, and its first overall enrollment increase in a decade.

Before being appointed SUNY Chancellor, King served as president of The Education Trust, a national civil rights nonprofit. Prior to this, King served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. Upon tapping him to lead the U.S. Department of Education, President Obama called King “an exceptionally talented educator,” citing his commitment to “preparing every child for success,” and his lifelong dedication to public education as a teacher, principal, and leader of schools and school systems. Chancellor King had previously served as Deputy Secretary of Education.

His service in Washington, D.C. followed King’s tenure as New York State’s first African American and first Puerto Rican Education Commissioner, a role in which he oversaw all elementary and secondary schools, as well as public, independent, and proprietary colleges and universities, professional licensure, libraries, museums, and numerous other educational institutions.

Chancellor King holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, as well as both a Master of Arts in the teaching of social studies and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University.

You can follow Chancellor King on Twitter at @JohnBKing.

Ken Ohashi is a highly-regarded industry executive with over two decades of experience in fashion, consumer products, retail and business development. In his role as Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ohashi leverages his vast expertise to provide strategic, financial and operational leadership for Brooks Brothers, a $800M brand with 600-plus retail doors worldwide. He works closely with the brand’s Board of Directors, senior leadership and international network of partners to drive the global business.

Prior to joining Brooks Brothers, Mr. Ohashi was President of International and Global Retail for Authentic Brands Group (ABG), leading the brand management, business development and marketing of ABG’s $4 billion portfolio of iconic and world-renowned brands outside the U.S. Additionally, Mr. Ohashi oversaw the formation of SPARC Group, a joint venture between ABG and Simon Property Group that supports 3,600-plus retail doors and shop-in-shops, a leading eCommerce platform and $4.7 billion in global retail sales annually.

Before ABG, Mr. Ohashi was Senior Vice President of International and Global Licensing for Aéropostale, where he was responsible for overseeing the brand’s business development, merchandising, planning, corporate and store operations. Under Mr. Ohashi’s leadership, the brand’s international business experienced tremendous growth. In less than five years, Aéropostale expanded into new markets across Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America and opened over 300 stores in 17 countries. Prior to his role as SVP, Mr. Ohashi served as Aéropostale’s Vice President of Investor and Media Relations. In this role, Mr. Ohashi managed the company’s $3 billion market cap, as well as relationships with over 30 equity research analysts, the company’s shareholders, media and Board of Directors. Mr. Ohashi first joined Aéropostale in 2002 to transition the company from privately held to publicly traded. He played a core role on the team that led the company through its $275 million initial public offering.

Before joining Aéropostale, Mr. Ohashi spent several years in Arthur Andersen LLP’s Business Assurance and Advisory Group, where he specialized in audit and consulting to retail, fashion, advertising and pharmaceutical companies. Mr. Ohashi’s work has been recognized by some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. In February 2010, Mr. Ohashi was ranked first in Institutional Investor (II) Magazine’s annual Wall Street survey in the ‘Best Investor Relations Officer’ category, and was named to the publication’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 All-American Executive teams. In February 2011, Mr. Ohashi was also named “Best IRO” in the mid-cap 400 by Bloomberg and Investor Relations Magazine. In 2015, Mr. Ohashi was also named one of 50 Outstanding Asian Americans in Business by the Asian American Business Development Center.

Mr. Ohashi also serves on the Board of Delivering Good, which is a non-profit organization that connects fashion and consumer product companies with victims of poverty and natural disasters. To date the organization has collected over $2 billion in new product from over 500+ companies to support those in need.