Michele Cahill is vice-president for national programs at Carnegie Corporation of New York where she leads the philanthropy’s strategy to support creation of pathways to educational success by generating systemic change across K-12 and higher education, and to support expanded pathways to citizenship, civil participation and civic integration in a pluralistic society. Michele served as the Co-chair of the Carnegie-Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education, managing the development of its 2009 report, The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for the Global Economy and Citizenship.
Prior to rejoining Carnegie Corporation in 2007, Michele was the senior counselor to the chancellor for education policy in the New York City Department of Education under Chancellor Joel Klein. From its inception in 2002 Cahill was a member of the Children First senior leadership team that oversaw and implemented the full-scale reorganization and reform of the New York City public schools. Some specific areas of focus included district redesign , research and development capacity to guide strategies to increase the graduation rate, new school development and creation and expansion of innovative school designs for re-engaging and accelerating the learning of overage and under-credited adolescents.
Michele has experience in education reform in various settings including founding and co-leading for a decade a college program for non-traditional students that received national recognition for innovation and degree completion; developing and expanding the Beacons community school model, directing numerous demonstration projects and evaluations, and working in education philanthropy. Michele began her school reform work as a community organizer with out-of-school youth in Jersey City more than thirty years ago.
Michele has a B.A. in Urban Affairs from Saint Peter's College, a Masters of Arts in Urban Affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and she pursued doctoral studies in social policy and planning at Columbia University where she was a Revson Fellow.
