🎙️ Ep. 54 · Ian Rowe | Founder of Vertex Partnership Academies

Aug 27, 2025

Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, shares his inspiring journey rooted in Jamaican heritage. He discusses the power of self-advocacy in addressing educational disparities and the importance of high expectations for low-income students. Rowe emphasizes integrating virtues into education and redefining values to enhance student agency. He also highlights the significance of the 'FREE' pillars—Family, Religion, Education, and Entrepreneurship—in fostering success for students in challenging environments.

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ANECDOTE

Coming-Of-Agency Moment

At 12 Ian Rowe begged his parents to stay at his Black junior high instead of transferring to a white annex.
His parents agreed and he calls that his coming-of-agency moment that changed his life trajectory.

ANECDOTE

MTV Media For Social Good

Ian worked at MTV leading pro-social campaigns like Rock the Vote and global concerts with Bono.
His team won two Emmys for youth-focused shows and early online platforms that connected young activists.

ANECDOTE

Early-Years Home Visiting Success

At Public Prep Ian built pre-K through eighth-grade schools and partnered with Sesame Street and a home-visiting literacy program.
The program coached caregivers and created home libraries so younger siblings entered kindergarten ready to learn.

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Entrepreneurs. Educators. Investors. Policymakers. Hosted by GSV Founder & CEO Michael Moe, Ed on the Edge covers the "who" and the "how" of driving change in the global education landscape.

Ian Rowe is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on education and upward mobility, family formation, and adoption. Mr. Rowe is also the cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies, a network of virtues-based International Baccalaureate high schools inaugurated in the Bronx in 2022; the chairman of the board of Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption services organization; and the cofounder of the National Summer School Initiative. He concurrently serves as a senior visiting fellow at the Woodson Center and a writer for the 1776 Unites Campaign.

Mr. Rowe was CEO of Public Prep, a nonprofit network of public charter schools based in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan, for a decade. Before joining Public Prep, he was deputy director of postsecondary success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, senior vice president of strategic partnerships and public affairs at MTV, director of strategy and performance measurement at the USA Freedom Corps office in the White House, and cofounder and president of Third Millennium Media. Mr. Rowe also joined Teach for America in its early days.

He has been widely published in the popular press, including in the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Examiner, and is often interviewed on talk radio programs.

Following the publication of his book Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for All Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power (Templeton Press, 2022), Mr. Rowe leads AEI’s FREE Initiative. The FREE Initiative cultivates a deeper understanding of how family, religion, education, and entrepreneurship weave together a moral fabric that shapes children. Those insights have been shared with leaders around the country who can reinvigorate the crucial institutions that help develop agency in young people.

Mr. Rowe has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was the first black editor-in-chief of the Harbus; a BS in computer science engineering from Cornell University; and a diploma in electrical engineering from Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City’s elite public schools, which specializes in science, technology, and mathematics.

Bio via AEI