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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
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” - Vincent van Gogh
Heron Alpern
"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
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” - Paul Kalanithi
Miriam Barnicle
"What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy."
-John Dewey
Julie Burnett
“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
Stephanie Champi
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought." - Basho
Clare DeSio
“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
"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
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"- Lao Tzu
Jaye Hobart
Kiara Jackson
“The educator has the duty of not being neutral.”
—Paulo Freire
"Be the change you wish to see in the world" - Gandhi
Mariel Laureano
Bridget Lee
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
– Søren Kierkegaard
Esther Lee
"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
“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
“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
“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
“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
"Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself."
- Jane Addams
Anna Weiss