Kristin Kearns-Jordan
![Kristin Kearns-Jordan](https://www.exeter.edu/sites/default/files/styles/standard_inline_image_730_x_auto/public/news/KKJ.jpg?itok=F3s8aht7)
“The whole ecosystem of education needs to change.”
From one neighborhood to the next, and even from block to block, students in New York City can face radically different options for where they go to public school. More affluent families are often able to navigate the system and enroll their children at the most reputable schools, Kristin Kearns-Jordan ’87 says, while the less-privileged simply don’t have the same access.
It’s an inequity she noticed at her very first job after graduating from Brown in 1991. She vividly remembers mentoring high school students and being struck by this two-tiered system, in which lower-income students were being denied a fundamental tool consistent, high-level education from elementary through high school — for improving their futures. “I became focused on those inequities,” she says, “and came to believe deeply that education is the most powerful lever for achieving societal change.”
Kearns-Jordan has carried that passion for expanding educational opportunities for underserved communities for the last 25 years, from founding the Bronx Preparatory Charter School in 2000 to spending six years as executive director of the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation, which works to help students overcome socioeconomic barriers and graduate from high school. “The whole ecosystem of education needs to change, the rules need to be reset, and the quality needs to reach all kids,” she says.