Teaching as Collective Leadership - A Conversation with Wendy Kopp

Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations working to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Prior to launching Teach For All in 2007, Wendy founded and led Teach For America – which has proven to be an unparalleled source of long-term leadership for expanding opportunity for children in the United States – for 24 years. Wendy led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries.

Wendy is the author of A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All (2011) and One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way (2000). She holds honorary doctorate degrees from 15 universities and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Wise Prize for Education (2021), Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008) and the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003).

Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and resides in New York City with her husband and their four children.

In the news

• Quartz, “The World in 50 Years”
• Diplomatic Courier, “To Remake the World, Let’s Rethink Education”
• NPR’s How I Built This With Guy Raz, “Teach For America: Wendy Kopp”
• The Wall Street Journal, “Copying Singapore’s math homework”
• TIME, “How to help national school systems succeed”
• The Economist, “High fliers in the classroom”
• Financial Times, “Philanthropy must shift its focus to the global education crisis”
• World Economic Forum, “Why it’s time for International Development to Put People First”

Social Links

LinkedIn: @wendy-kopp

Twitter: @wendykopp