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The Fund
The Fund’s management team proves an integral asset to our success. Combined with our financial capital and our portfolio of program investments, The Fund is building a critical mass of great public schools in Chicago. Our team, comprised of individuals dedicated to this mission, values equity, integrity, and excellence, and we employ collaboration, innovation, and effective leadership to set and reach our goals.
"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."
– Gloria E. Anzaldúa
"Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation."
–Robert H. Schuller
Heather Y. Anichini
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
- bell hooks
Alexis Ayala
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
– Nelson Mandela
Annie Filer
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Nelson Gerew
“I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare”
- Maya Angelou
Amir Ghazaleh
Kiara Jackson
“The educator has the duty of not being neutral.”
—Paulo Freire
Bridget Lee
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
– Søren Kierkegaard
Esther Lee
“When I dare to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
— Audre Lorde
Patricia Mota
"Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself."
- Jane Addams
Anna Weiss
"The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to." - Marian Wright Edelman
Cheryl Camacho
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths" - Walt Disney
Tiara Goodwin
“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Federico Sanchez
"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built." - Eleanor Roosevelt
Dan Ulloa
“Right now we are in a fast river together — every day there are changes that seemed unimaginable until they occurred.” - Adrienne Maree Brown
Ambrelyn Rodriguez
"Be the change you wish to see in the world" - Gandhi
Mariel Laureano
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” - Paul Kalanithi
Miriam Barnicle
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” — Mary Engelbreit
Ashton Yurk
"We cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people." - Lyndon B. Johnson
Chris LeSuer
"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” - Sylvia Plath
Kennedi Barnett
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." - Romans 12:21
José Colo
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
Stephani Champi
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” - Vincent van Gogh
Heron Alpern
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought." - Basho
Clare DeSio